24 Hours
by Miss Starfire
Summary: What happens when you combine a faulty time machine, a desperate genius and one chance to change history? 24 hours of insanity. SEQUEL TO 30 DAYS.
1. Prologue

**Summary:** What happens when you combine a faulty time machine, a desperate genius and one chance to change history? 24 hours of insanity. SEQUEL TO 30 DAYS.

**Warning:** What you are about to read is INSANE…bordering on MADNESS…

Madness? MADNESS! Madness? MADNESS!

We don't need to be in Sparta.

**Insanity:** The product of Miss Starfire being high on coffee and cookies.

_**If you haven't read 30 Days, please go and read that first :)**__**  
**_

**A/N:** Usual disclaimers apply regarding the lack of ownership of any of these characters or any invention of Disney/Marvel. As some of you have learned, standard warnings apply to all my stories: foul language, gory scenes, drama, angst and cliffies. My stories are better appreciated in half-screen mode of FF.

**PLEASE NOTE RATING IS M! You have been WARNED!**

**Oh, by the way, I threw myself into a hole and started another story with this one. It's for Iron Man Armored Adventures, and it's called _Broken_.  
**

**CRAP! I swapped the stories, but they are now fixed! Thanks ggan21!**

* * *

**24 HOURS**

**Prologue**

Five days after running off from the cemetery following a moment of realization, Tony Stark found himself locked up in his basement home; greasy, dirty, unshaven, surviving on liquor as his sole means of sustenance, with only ten hours of sleep in his body and not a drop of clean water or soap having touched his skin since the burial of Pepper Potts.

His eyes were wide with bewilderment, and he was only missing the hooded, hunchback assistant to complete the ensemble of a mad scientist. The lab was in complete disarray, and even his artificial intelligence companions were worried about him. Every now and then he would mumble a few words about the space-time continuum and its properties, Pepper's name, or a colorful string of derogatory words that would make his dead mother want to come back to life if only to shove a bar of soap down his throat.

"Sir, Colonel Rhodes is on line 1. Should I patch him through?"

"No." The genius answered almost mechanically as he soldered the new _miniaturized_-miniaturized arc reactor into place.

"But, sir –"

"Jarvis, shut it."

Tony rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. His sight had been deteriorating exponentially in the past few hours, and while he had reminded himself to blink more often, the technique was starting to lose its effectiveness; what his eyes truly needed was a long-night sleep.

_Just a little bit more._

"Tony! TONY!" Rhodey's screams from behind the locked glass door were ignored by the former playboy, and instantly became muffled under the sound of _Black Sabbath_ playing loudly on the speakers. Colonel Rhodes scoffed, throwing his left hand in the air when he heard the pounding sound of music resounding on the glass. He pulled his phone from his ear and noticed the call had been left unanswered so he flipped closed the device and thrust it inside his pants pocket.

"I swear, this man has a death wish," Rhodey mumbled as he typed in his 4-digit passcode to enter the lab, but the double beep that followed the pressing of the number sign button informed the military man his PIN was declined.

"What the hell, Jarvis? Why is my code not working?"

"Mr. Stark has removed permissions to all access codes other than his."

"What? Why?"

"He does not wish to be disturbed."

Rhodey groaned. "When was the last time he acted like a normal human being?"

The AI hesitated. "Uhm, Mr. Stark is not…"

"When was the last time he ate normal food?" Rhodey offered immediately after realizing there was no way in hell Jarvis could ever answer his previous question with an appropriate response.

"Records show there has been no standard intake of calories since the day he and Miss Potts left for their trip to Oakland."

"WHAT? That was over a week ago! Jarvis, open this door!"

"I am afraid I am not allowed to do so, Colonel Rhodes."

"Fuck."

"However," Jarvis continued. "I am at liberty to inform you that the last time these glass walls were replaced, bullet-proofed materials were not used."

James was taken aback. "What does THAT have to do with…_oh_!"

Rhodey took out his handgun from his back and shot the glass doors twice. As soon as the shards stopped falling to the floor, Rhodey ran inside the basement. The sound of the gunshots startled Tony, forcing him out of his concentration, and he stared over his shoulder.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The genius spat as he began running away from his incoming friend. "Are you crazy?"

"Tony, _stop_ moving! I'm gonna get your ass dragged out of here! Ugh!" Rhodey avoided the flying chair Tony had just thrown his way in an effort to stop the colonel from reaching him, earning Tony nothing more than just a couple more seconds of advantage over the trained man.

"No! No! I'm not done! I'm gonna bring Pepper back! I'm going to bring her back!"

"Bring her…what? Tony, she's gone!"

"No! She's not! I can bring her back! I can!" Tony tripped over a monkey wrench on the floor, but he got back up again. He could feel Rhodey on his heels, threatening to stop the work Tony strongly believed would help him recover the friend and love he had lost. Tony reached the corner of the basement and turned around only to see Rhodey standing a few feet away from him, obvious disappointment on his face.

"Tony, I'm gonna shoot you if you don't calm the fuck down. Look at you! When was the last time you used a toothbrush?"

Tony shook his head and stared down at his new watch, his hands shaking with anticipation. "I can't Rhodey. I can't stop. I'm so close…Pepper…she's…"

"Tony, breathe. Are you even listening to yourself?"

Tony's eyes filled with tears of desperation. He did not want to waste time, the opportunity to finish his project, but Rhodey was not going to back down and he knew it. The genius gave his friend one last glance before his shivering hands strapped the watch onto his left wrist. The calibration was yet to be completed, and he had not even had a chance to run a successful test. Heck! The arc reactor that powered the time machine bracelet was not working properly yet! For all he knew, he was about to send himself to meet the Wizard of Oz to join the army of flying monkeys, with no way to return home.

_It's better than being without her_, Tony thought, realizing his time was up. It was now or never; and never was not an option for him.

"Goodbye, Rhodey."

"Tony, what…"

A press of a button and a flash later, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes was left standing alone and confused inside the basement of Stark Mansion, wondering what he was doing there in the first place.

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**A/N:** Did I mention madness? Yeah…let me go get more coffee…FYI: This fic will defy all known laws of science for the sake of convenience. If this bothers you, please don't read :)


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Tony opened his eyes to the beeping of an alarm close by. The first thing he laid eyes on was the image of his favorite monkey wrench stuck under his outstretched arm, which it seemed he had used as an impromptu pillow for his head. He swallowed the dryness of his mouth and licked his lips, which tasted of boatloads of scotch. He pushed himself off the work table and stood straight on his stool. He blinked a few times and stretched his neck from side to side, loud bone popping sounds coming from it.

He was sitting in his basement lab, and nothing seemed out of place with the exception that he did not remember how he had gotten there in the first place. He scratched an itch on his neck, which then traveled down to his chest and his nails followed down to it. He absentmindedly proceeded to take care of the skin tingly sensation until he realized his chest felt strange.

_What the hell?_

He pulled his shirt up to stare down at his bare chest, which was devoid of any sign that a high-tech electromagnet had ever been there.

The arc reactor was gone.

Tony snapped his fingers on the computer monitor in front of him, bringing it to life from standby mode with his sound command. He double tapped an icon on the desktop screen and the embedded webcam turned on, immediately displaying him the image of his normal-looking chest. He swallowed the lump in his throat and remained silent and still for a minute as his mind recapped the most recent events he could recall.

_Pepper and I in a concert…she's…staying with me…we come back home and we…it's cold the next morning…and Pepper…she…she's…_

"Good morning, sir." The AI interjected, startling the hell out of the genius.

"Jarvis?"

"Yes?"

"What day is today?"

"June 17, 2015."

"I think I overshot it," Tony mumbled. He looked over his shoulder to the wall where his suits would usually be displayed, but he found there was no sign of Iron Man tech anywhere in the basement. Tony then stared down at his time machine bracelet/watch –which he had named _88MPH_, or _My Pepper Hunt, version 88_. The battery charge had been reduced by only one percent, which left him plenty of time to figure out the results his unfinished project had yielded. As he lost himself in his thoughts, the screensavers of his computer monitors activated, catching his attention and making his mouth go ajar.

The first picture that appeared in the middle monitor was of him and Pepper, dressed in wedding attire, staring at each other in front of a background of the sun setting in the ocean. The next picture was of them both again, this time holding a glass of some drink in their hands and posing for the self-picture, a crowd of faceless people behind them. The third picture that appeared showed Pepper in a blue hospital gown, looking tired and sweaty, but with a bright smile on her face, holding a baby in her arms. The fourth picture, one that made Tony smile in amazement, was of himself holding a newborn baby in his arms, sterile gloves and gown covering his usual trendy outfit, and Pepper in the background smiling fondly at them.

_We're married…we…we have a kid_,Tony exhaled. _I can live with that_.

"Tony? Tony, are you down there?"

The female voice coming from the staircase snapped him out of his picture staring time. He pressed a button on the keyboard to deactivate the screensaver on his screens and made a note of the time.

_10 AM._ _Got it on the first try. Man, I'm good!_

His eyes focused on the screen before him, pulling up his secure server and a web browser window to use an online search engine to find out what his life was like now, but before he could start his search, a loud thud on his desk made him look up.

"This is the last of the crap you asked me to put in a box for you. Make sure you take it with you to the hearing. I don't want this shit in my house anymore." Tony furrowed his brow in confusion, but Christine Everhart did not even notice his shock as she turned on her heels and went back up the stairs where she had come from. Tony's eyes then stared at the box and stretched his neck to see its contents.

"Jarvis?"

"Sir?"

"Do I have a hearing today?"

"Yes, sir. You are scheduled to appear in Malibu's civil court in an hour."

"What for?"

"To finalize your divorce with Miss Potts."

The moment Jarvis answered Tony's question, the scientist hands flew to the box, pulled it closer to him and began digging inside. The _crap_ Christine did not want in _her_ house included pictures of him and Pepper, toys –which he assumed belonged to his kid, and several other random trinkets he could only infer held some sentimental value for him or Pepper.

Tony's heart began racing as fast as his fingers flew on the keyboard, continuing his search for his life's story with a renewed drive. "Jarvis, why am I getting divorced?"

"Because you filed for it a year ago."

"What was the reason I filed it for?"

"Irreconcilable differences."

"Fuck," Tony clicked on the first web search link with his name and Pepper's and began reading its contents to himself.

_After five years of marriage, billionaire Tony Stark and wife Virginia "Pepper" Potts have announced their formal separation. The court documents our investigators gathered list irreconcilable differences as the main cause for the split-up; however, sources close to the couple state the CEO of Stark Industries has regained his mantle as playboy, and that in fact the reason for the divorce is the discovery of a year-long affair of Stark with Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair, Christine Everhart. The divorce will be finalized in the next year, and the couple expects to share custody of their only son, James Stark._

"I cheated on Pepper?!"

"Sir, you asked me to remind you to get ready for your hearing if you were not out the door by 10:15 AM."

"What happens if I don't show up? Will that cancel the divorce?"

"No, sir. Your presence there is only a formality. You already signed the documents two weeks ago."

_"Tony! Will you hurry up? You're going to be late! You promised me we would go out and celebrate your divorce today. You better had not have forgotten about that!"_ Christine yelled from the top of the stairs.

Tony was at a loss. This was not what he had planned.

xxxXXXxxx

Tony sat in a chair in the small conference room of the court building, rapidly tapping his fingers on the table. He had rushed toward the hearing after ignoring Christine's complaints that she wanted him back before noon, and dodging a shoe she had thrown his way. His fist covered his mouth and he eyed everyone and everything with confusion and mistrust until the main entrance door opened to reveal Pepper and another woman arriving to the site.

His eyes glued to her form he thought he would never see again, and he followed her path as she sat on the opposite side of the table. She did not spare him a glance, and instead whispered in hushed tones with the woman that had she had come with, presumably being her attorney or similar representative of the law. A third woman walked inside the room a few seconds later, and everyone stood up, even Tony who was too confused to even fathom how he was expected to act, stumbled to his feet.

"Take a seat," the woman at the front said, and everyone complied. "We're here today to hear the final statements of Mr. Stark and Mrs. Stark, in the matter of case MCA-2016-256. Your file has been reviewed by the clerk and myself, and every document has been approved and sanctioned by this court. Any final statements Mrs. Stark?"

"No, your honor." Pepper responded, staring directly at the presiding officer. "No final statement."

"Very well," the officer made some notes on a piece of paper before she raised her eyes and stared directly at Tony's.

"Mr. Stark. Any final statements?"

Tony's deer-caught-in-the-headlights look shifted from the officer to his attorney, to Pepper's attorney, and then finally to Pepper. His former PA continued to look away from him, and had not it been for his long silence and incessant staring, she would have never mustered up the nerve to look back at him.

"I…" Tony began, losing himself in her anger-filled blue eyes. "Pepper…" He stretched his arm toward hers.

"Mr. Stark? Do you or do you not have a final statement to make? I have other engagements I must tend to." The officer snapped at the billionaire.

"Pepper, take me back…" His fingertips brushed her forearm, and Pepper pulled her arm away as if his touch had scalded her. "Please…take me back…"

Pepper bit her lip in an obvious attempt to keep herself from crying, and shook her head.

"Pep," Tony chocked. "It'll be just like before," he reasoned, even though he had no idea how life had been between when they were married, but he could only hope it had been good. "We can make it work, you…me, and James…"

"Oh, my God!" Pepper's attorney slammed her fist on the table. "Your honor, motion to call the hearing adjourned?"

"Mr. Stark, for the last time," the officer warned. "Do you have a final statement?"

"We can be happy again, Pepper…the three of us…"

Tony's words were cut off when he felt his head snap to the side. It took him a few seconds to come to his senses, but when he did, he realized Pepper had slapped him, hard.

"I'm sorry, your honor," Pepper whispered as she and her attorney stood up from their chairs and began walking to the door. The officer called the hearing to be over, and a moment after that Tony was left alone in the room with his attorney as his only company. The man shook his head at the inventor in a despondent manner.

"Mr. Stark, I told you not to drink before this hearing; you don't watch what you say when you're drunk."

"What? I…I didn't…"

"It doesn't matter now. You're divorced. It's over. Have a good day, Mr. Stark," the man said as he walked away from Tony and disappeared behind the closed door. Tony pulled back his body from over the table, and straightened out in his chair.

"I have to fix this. I have to find a way."

Tony pulled out his phone from his jacket's pocket and pressed on the speed dial number for reaching Jarvis' direct line. As soon as he heard the click of Jarvis answering the call, he spoke into it. "Jarvis, what are the terms of my divorce?"

_"Miss Potts will receive a monthly alimony allowance of $15,000 for the rest of her life, 35% of company stocks and investment, 10% of the controlling interest in Stark Industries, and corporate-level health benefits until age 65."_

"What about child support?"

_ "No records of child support payments exist."_

"What do you mean? Am I keeping James?" Tony asked, the name of his son still foreign to his lips but somehow making sense in his convoluted mind of his.

_ "James Stark is deceased, sir."_

Tony almost dropped the phone; a cold shiver ran down his spine.

"What? When? How?"

_"An automobile accident, six months ago."_

"Car accident? Who was driving?"

_"You, sir."_

_ No, _Tony closed his eyes, exhaled, and ended the call. He almost forgot how to breathe but the pain in his chest reminded him he had to, so he took in deep, long breaths. It was no wonder why Pepper had decided to rearrange his face just now when he had mentioned their child; the boy was gone! Why did he not think to investigate further before coming here? Why did he not put it together himself? How in the world had he screwed up his life, _their_ life, so badly?

He had no business in the court building anymore, and he did not want to return home to Christine. He could only think of one place to hide, and before anyone decided to come loking for him, Tony stood up from the chair, left the building, and sped his way to his office in SI.

xxxXXXxxx

_ BREAKING NEWS: James Stark, son of genius inventor Tony Stark and Virginia Potts has been reported dead following a car accident. A police investigator, who relayed information to us in exchange for anonymity, stated that the CEO of Stark Industries and his son were involved in a major vehicular accident on the PCH. It appears the toddler was not secured to the seat, and was ejected from the tumbling automobile as it rolled down a ditch on the side of the road. It is suspected that alcohol may have been involved in the tragedy, but it has not yet been confirmed. Tony Stark's injuries were minor and he was cleared of life-threatening bodily harm almost immediately after paramedics arrived following a distress call from a passerby. His son, however, was declared dead at the scene._

Tony could not believe the news report on his screen, but several other sources had confirmed it: he had caused his son's death. He had been able to walk out of the situation unscathed due to his influence and money, but it did not make his punishment any less severe. He had already pinched his arms a few times, hoping that Rhodey had actually shot him in the face and he was now recovering in a hospital bed, but there had been no such luck. This reality was his new reality, and he cursed himself for ever believing there was nothing worse than a reality where Pepper did not live.

_Why did this happen? Why am I still an insensitive jerk?_

Was it because he did not have to work his way to winning Pepper's heart? The story on them said that Pepper and he had begun dating almost immediately after she became his PA. Was it because he was not Iron Man? The arc reactor on his chest was only the first indication that he was not a superhero in this reality, which he had confirmed by the missing specs of his Mark suits. Or, maybe, just maybe, he had just failed to discover what he was supposed to do –what his purpose in life was, and thus he had no respect for what he had, or the people he was with.

_But, why? What did I do wrong?_

What had been the turning point of his life? What had caused him to become the man the version of Pepper in his past timeline had fallen in love with? Clearly, she would have fallen in love with him either way, but he was not the same man he remembered from hours ago. The man he had become would have never cheated on Pepper, or driven his son while intoxicated, or many of the other horrible things he had just found out about himself. Those were acts of the old Tony, the Tony that existed before Afghanistan. The Tony that…

_Oh, shit._

It finally dawned on him.

Afghanistan; that was the clue.

Even though the result of his kidnapping was the indirect cause of Pepper's palladium poisoning, he could prevent her death if he knew about it beforehand. However, his life would have never been the same; his ego would have never been punctured if he had not faced death in that cave.

_I have to go back to the cave. I have to live through it again. But, how?_

The means to do so was the million-dollar question for him. The specs for the _Doc Brown Project_ did not exist in this continuity, and he had no clue how he had triggered the date he had arrived to. His encounter with Rhodey was not entirely clear to him, and he could not determine how to replicate the events that had sent him back in time, or even finding the steps to sending himself forward to a different timeline.

"There must be a way." He took off the watch from his hand and stared at it, noticing that the battery was down to 95%. Tony pursed his lips, confused by the loss of power when a transfer was not in motion.

_Maybe it's a timer_, he ventured as he put it back on his wrist. He stared at the clock on his computer screen, and he noted it was 10 PM at night. He had been here for only twelve hours, and he already missed his past reality. He had to go home at some point, but he dreaded the mood Christine would be in since he had not called her back. He had an influx of missed calls and messages in his cell phone, but he did not give a rat's ass if the woman was pissed off at him.

_Christine Everhart, really? What was I thinking?_

Truth was, he wasn't.

Defeated and tired, Tony decided to spend the night at a motel; the most run down one he could find in the vicinity of the company. No one would ever consider looking for the billionaire at nothing other than a five-star hotel or in his home; a home he now shared with the airheaded bimbo he had fucked once after a drunken night in Vegas and had apparently fucked many times after that – in his own home, nonetheless.

_ I can't believe I did this to Pepper; to our son._

Filled with thoughts of regret and simmering in the irony of the impact of the experience in Afghanistan had on his life, Tony closed his eyes and went to sleep. He would have all the time in the world tomorrow to figure out how to haul ass out of this sick reality, and find the one where he was not an asshole, a cheater, a kid-murdered, and Pepper was still in his life; alive and well, and riding his ass to go to work.

_Damn you, Afghanistan._

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**A/N:** Well, shit. This is so depressing even I feel like crap after writing it. Oh, well, let's try this again, shall we?


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Holy crap! I knew the chappie was depressing but…DAMN! Unfortunately, I gotta say, my Faithful Readers, the first chapter is NOTHING compared to what I have in store for our beloved Pepperony. HOWEVER, there IS a happy ending, I promise (you should know by now; if it wasn't, I'd tell you right now). The story is not too long (outline already completed), only 10 chapters plus prologue and epilogue, so you only have to suffer with them for, uhm…8 more chapters after this :)

Anyone catching on to what's happening here?

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**Chapter 2**

"Get up!" A male voice said very close to him before he felt ice cold water being poured on his face. Tony groaned in response, refusing to open his eyes and instead shifted to his side. The owner of the voice, however, did not give up his demands, and threw yet another load of cold water on the scientist's face. "Stark, they're coming! Get up!"

"What the hell?"

"They're pissed at you! Get UP!"

Tony blinked rapidly to allow his pupils to adjust to the dim light around him, and the first image he saw that was of Yinsen, towering over him with an anxious look on his face.

_Wait, Yinsen?_

The billionaire sat up straight and almost hit Yinsen on the face had the man not taken a step back. Tony looked around himself with wild eyes, and it finally dawned on him that he was not in the rundown motel room he had gone to bed in. He was now back inside the rotten cave where his life had inadvertently changed for the best. _I traveled again? Why did I travel?_

The sound of incoming steps and screaming from the outside made him stand from the bed and run up to Yinsen. His old companion was just as he remembered him, and as he looked down at his own torso, he found that a makeshift version of an arc reactor was embedded in his chest_. OK, fine! Fuck the reason why I'm here. I'm back, and that's all that matters. I just have to escape again!_

Never in his life had Tony Stark been so happy than to have returned to the wretched cave, even though he knew he still had more torture and famish to endure before his time to leave came. He was not sure what which thought was making the surprise travel easier: the fact that he knew how this story ended, or the implication his captivity had in this timeline. _This just means Pepper still lives, and she's still my PA. And all I have to do is…_

The metal door slamming on the wall put a stop to Tony's thoughts as the Ten Rings group walked inside the room, almost exactly as he remembered them doing so before. Tony felt Yinsen poke his shoulder with his elbow, reminding him to raise his arms and put them behind his head. Tony reacted almost immediately, and it was then that the leader of the group, Raza, walked inside. "Where is my weapon, Stark?"

Tony eyed Yinsen with a confused look. He suddenly could not remember what he had responded to Raza last time he had been here or even if he had said anything at all. Raza took Tony's silence as another sign of defiance, prompting him to speak to Yinsen in that same darned language Tony could not understand. A moment later, Yinsen whispered in Tony's ear. "Stop messing around, Stark. They're going to punish you again if you don't get your act together."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean! They've already killed your military friend. What else do you want them to do?"

"Military…friend?"

Tony's words were again interrupted when two more of Raza's minions walked inside the room with a woman in tow. Tony rummaged through his mind for any indication that this had happened the last time he had been here, but for the life of him he could not recall much. His personal mental search ended when he heard a small cry coming from the woman, making Tony look up to stare at her.

The two men forced her to her knees, and then removed the bag from her head. She was sitting sideways to where Tony stood, so only the profile of her face was visible to him. Her hair was long and matted, clearly not having been washed in a very long time. The small part of her face he could see sported bruises and deep cuts, possibly deliberately made. Her lip was busted and dried blood had made a trail down her chin. Her clothes were torn, dirty and did not fit her pregnant belly in the least, so they stuck to her thin form like glue.

_Pregnant belly?_

"How much more do you think your woman can withstand here, Stark?" Raza walked toward where his two servants held the woman down. "I had hoped that killing that stubborn man would have made you come to your senses. What do I need to do? Kill her, too?"

Raza made a sign with his chin to the men. One of them pulled on the woman's hair, forcing her head to snap back, and the other forced open her mouth with his hands. Raza stood in front of the submitted girl and unzipped his pants. "Do you enjoy it every time we do this to her? My men and I don't mind, but your pretty assistant must be getting tired of it."

_A-Assistant? _Tony thought, too stunned to move.

The gagging sounds that followed made Tony want to stick a needle in his ears, and the crude scene before him made the billionaire want to gouge his eyes out. When Raza was done with the deed, he zipped up his pants again and slapped the woman's face to the left. "So, do you have anything to tell your boss, whore? Tell him to hurry up and build my weapons!" Raza pressed on.

Holding back sobs, she spat on the floor before looking up to stare directly at the shocked genius with her one remaining blue eye. "Don't build them, Tony. Fuck him, don't do it!"

"Pepper?" He whispered, her unmistakable tone of voice reaching his ears, and yet he could not believe his eyes. Tony had believed that his heart could not break into more pieces than when he had seen the lifeless body of Pepper in his bed, but clearly he had been mistaken. Here he was, back in the Godforsaken cave experience he was willing to relive himself, but this time he was not alone. _This is not how it's supposed to happen. She's not supposed to be here!_

"PEPPER!"

"Ah! There it is," Raza said, satisfied that he was finally getting the reaction he was expecting. "You haven't lost it yet, I see." He grabbed Pepper by the hair again and pulled her back to her keeling position before he kicked her in the stomach. Pepper gasped and tried to cover her stomach with her arms, but Raza made sure she was unable to move again. "So, you've been slacking off, for…how long? Ten days?" He turned to his men who nodded along with him. "That means _nine _of my men get to have fun today."

"NO! PEPPER!" Tony launched himself toward the group, his paralyzed limbs finally connecting with his brain impulses, but he was stopped in an instant by Raza's thugs. His eyes traveled to his strawberry-blonde girl as she was dragged out of the room by her hair, kicking and screaming behind the group of men that were going to _punish _her. Tony's eyes filled with tears, and he screamed her name until his throat went dry. The last thing he heard from her trembling but determined voice before he was hit in the head with the back of a rifle, were her pleas to him not to build the weapons Raza wanted from him, no matter the cost.

xxxXXXxxx

"What do they want?" Tony asked Yinsen a couple of hours after he had seen Pepper being abused and then taken away from him, finally woken up from the hit on the head he had received. "A Jericho, right? That's all they want?"

"Are you losing it, Stark?" Yinsen reproached. "You know they want an entire arsenal again. The one you built them a month ago ran out."

"_Arsenal_? I…I built them an _arsenal_?" Tony cleared his throat; the impure water he had been given was not enough to replenish his vocal chords as fast as he needed it to. "How long have I…have _we_, been here?"

Yinsen eyed him with confusion of his own. He knew Tony was a science genius but a scattered brain for almost everything else, but he was acting as if he had forgotten everything that had occurred so far. "Two years. We've been here for two years."

"W-w-what?"

"Did they hit you _that_ hard?"

"What?"

Yinsen shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Are we starting this or not? If we start now, we can have half of the weapons done by the morrow. Virginia should not have to go through another abortion so soon. I don't think she will make it this time."

"Abortion? THIS time? ANOTHER?" Tony's head was spinning. He could only imagine the unmentionable horrors Pepper had been put through. Two years was a long time to think of ways to torture a woman, especially a woman that was being held captive for the sole purpose of making him do what Raza wanted. He smacked his face with his palms a few times, and then sat down on the questionable cot he had woken up from. "Is Rhodey…dead?"

Yinsen nodded.

"How?"

"Bled to death."

Tony closed his eyes for an instant, and when he opened them again he stared down at his bracelet. The charge was now at 87%, but without an exact date or time, he was not able to make any calculations or even dare to estimate how or why he had traveled without his consent or command. Yinsen stared at Tony's wrist and frowned.

"What is that? Is that a watch? When did you get that?"

Tony pulled away his arm when his cell mate tried to reach over to touch it. "It's a timer, for the arc reactor," Tony lied.

"Ah! I don't remember seeing you building it. Must have been one of those nights you don't sleep at all."

"Yeah," he nodded. "Yeah, that's when I made it."

"Well, let's stop wasting time or Raza is going to really get mad at us."

"Sure, so, what are we supposed to do?"

"Let me check the records. I'll tally how many more of each type of weapon we need."

"OK, you go ahead and do that." Tony stood up from his cot and walked to the working table farthest from Yinsen, and pretended to work on schematics while he put his observations in order. He knew that just yesterday he had been in a different reality, and the last thing he remembered from that reality was falling asleep. He had not pressed any buttons on the bracelet, but there was a possibility that he had rolled over it and pressed it by accident some time throughout the night. How the algorithm had determined where or when to take him, however, he was not sure.

_What if I press it again right now? Would I go somewhere else?_

Tony's finger lingered over the button, but he could not find it in himself to press it. The fear that he would end up in a worse reality scared him, plus he did not want to waste energy he could use later on. _What would happen if I take Pepper with me? Can I do that?_

He then thought about opening the device and trying to load the algorithm to review it, but he doubted he had the correct tools to do so, and he risked the chance to break it altogether, leaving him stuck in this sucky reality. _If I change realities, does that mean the other one cancels out? I did __**not**__ think this through!_

He sincerely hoped that the new reality replaced the old, because if he found a way to travel to another timeline and the previous one remained, he did not want to live with the knowledge that in one part of an alternate timeline, Pepper was abused – in all possible ways – because of him, while crumbling down in a remote location where no one would find her alive ever again.

Tony shook his head. _Focus Stark! How did you travel without even being aware? Do I need to be asleep?_

"Hey, Yinsen, do you know what times it is…my, uhm…my watch doesn't seem to be working."

"It's noon."

"Thanks," Tony responded and looked down at his bracelet once more. _I woke up yesterday at 10 AM and it was at 99%. Last time I checked it, it was at 95%. It's noon today and it's at 87%._ Tony rubbed his eyes with his fingertips; either the math was not making sense in his head, or he was more tired than he thought he was.

"I have the tally for you."

"What?"

"The tally of weapons; it's ready."

"Oh, yeah, uhm, let me take a look." Tony walked up to Yinsen and grabbed the piece of paper. He scanned the page for only a brief second and began to panic. "What is this?"

"The list of weapons."

"I…I don't know these names."

"What do you mean you don't know them? If we don't have at least half of these ready by tomorrow, they're going to beat up Virginia again. I don't want her to have to be unconscious for weeks once more! We nearly lost her last time."

"I don't want that either, but…" Tony trailed as he forced his mind to match the names of the weapons with their respective schematics. He had never heard of the names before. If Raza had wanted a Jericho, he would have built it with no problem, if just for he and his men to leave Pepper alone. These weapons, however, he had never heard of before. _Why don't I remember my own weapons? I mean, I remember all of my other designs, but these…FUCK!_

"You said I've made these for him before, right?" Tony asked, slowly coming to the understanding of why he did not know these weapons' names.

"Are you feeling alright, Stark? You sound like someone just dropped you here today."

_Might as well have_, Tony pondered, cursing his luck. If he had been here for two years like Yinsen had said, that meant that he had probably designed brand new weapons for Raza that he would have not otherwise built before. Unless he got a hold of the schematics for these new weapons he did not remember creating, Pepper was shit outta luck. "I think the hit…I don't remember…do we have the specs for these?"

Yinsen studied Tony's face for a moment, as if trying to read his thoughts. When Tony's features did not change from his honest confusion, Yinsen shook his head. "You never put them down on paper. The specs were always in your head. You said you didn't want Raza to find us useless if he had the specs for him to replicate."

_Of course I would do that! _Tony hit the table with his fist."Pepper." Tony's jaw clenched. "They're going to…"

_BAM!_

The metal door slammed against the rock wall again, but this time Raza and his groupie did not come in. Instead, three women walked inside. Two of them were dragging the third one – Pepper – dropping her on the dusty ground by the entrance. One of the women looked at Yinsen and spoke to him in one of the many foreign languages he knew before she and her companion walked out of the room.

"Pepper!" Tony ran toward her and picked her up in his arms. Yinsen followed Tony as he took her to the cot he assumed was his, laying her down and holding her chin with his hand. "Pepper, Honey, talk to me. Are you alright?"

"Stark," Yinsen pointed to the trail of blood coming from between Pepper's legs. Both men stared at each other for a quick second before the older man started spitting out orders to a shocked Tony Stark, pushing him out of the way. "Get some water, and the first aid kit! There's not time to sterilize it; we need to stop the bleeding."

Tony twirled on the spot where he stood, not knowing where to find the items he was being told to get. Yinsen was hard at work checking Pepper's vitals and when Tony took longer than expected to get the supplies he needed, he groaned.

"Dammit, Tony! Snap out of it! It's just like last time, and the three other times before that! Get moving!"

"T-three…?" Tony thought his eyes were going to fall out of their sockets.

Yinsen ignored the genius, opting to start looking for the materials himself. However, a small whimper coming from their patient caught their attention, freezing them both in shock.

"No," Pepper's small voice uttered. "No more."

"Pep?"

"S-stop. Please…no…more…"

Tony was next to her in an instant.

"Pepper, Yinsen is gonna help you, alright. Just, let him help you." He held her hand in his and kissed the back of it despite the sweat and grime on it. Pepper looked up to him, struggling to focus on his face with her only eye, which was almost swollen shut as a result of a rapidly developing bruise. "Please, Pepper…we can help you…"

Pepper shook her head as determinedly as she could in her state. She swallowed hard, licking her lips that were suddenly feeling extremely cold. "I can't…do this…"

"Pepper, please," Tony begged, leaning down to her face and brushing her hair off her face. "I have a plan. I'll get us out of here, all of us, if you just hold on…"

Her free hand reached up to his face, but with so much pain and tiredness it was difficult for her to steady her pulse. Tony noticed her effort and read her gestures, so he leaned down even closer and pressed the side of his face to her palm. Pepper gave him a smile and tried to squeeze the hand he held with both of his. "It's OK, Tony. They…they won't hurt me anymore…and…they… won't be able…to make you do anything…you don't…want to do…"

"No, no, no, no, no, Pepper! This can't end like this. I need you, Potts. God, I love you, woman! I want us to be happy together. I want _you_ to be happy!"

Pepper chuckled, despite the situation. "I…was…happy…with you…Tony…Don't…build…_anything_…_Don't_…give…in…_Don't_…give…up. Don't…" Her voice trailed away, and after a final exhale, Pepper Potts died in Tony Stark's arms. His screams and wails called the attention of the guards standing outside their cell, and only another well placed hit on the back of Tony's head allowed the men to pry her from his hands.

* * *

**A/N:** A very appropriate song here: _There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there. Telling me I got to beware. I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound. Everybody look what's going down._

Major shot out to StarksViolet who hit it right on the nose: "[T]here needs to be immense darkness before light can be appreciated." Immense darkness, indeed… Can anyone guess where Tony is going next?


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"Shiiiiiit," Tony mumbled as he felt yet another wave of bile rising up to his mouth. He was already on the floor in the bathroom, hugging the toilet with all his might, so the almost projectile vomiting did not make it far from the intended target. He flushed the toilet for the twentieth time, and the sound of the water circling around the porcelain throne made his head hurt.

"Fuuuuck! Hurtsssss!"

"You should've thought of that last night after the 10th glass of scotch, Mr. Stark."

Tony narrowed his eyes toward the voice, forgetting for an instant he was half nude, hugging a toilet, and probably looked like hell.

"This is going down in the books as the worst hangover ever, Tony." Pepper walked up to the standing shower and opened both faucets, regulating it so that the water was warm. She then turned around and looked down at the stunned billionaire, and shook her head at him. "Get up; we have a video conference at noon with your business partners in Taiwan."

Tony eyed her up and down as if he had not seen her in ages, and then looked at himself. His arc reactor was exactly where he expected it to could not remember drinking last night, but then again that was not uncommon for him. He looked up at Pepper again, and noticed she had a disapproving look on her face. "Come on, Tony! Let's not do this today. I'm already not happy that I had to cover your ass for the meeting you missed this morning; not happy at all."

_Happy? Pepper not happy?_ The genius closed his eyes, the word struck a nerve within him, but he could not quite place why. Ignoring his throbbing head, he slowly stood up from the floor, using the wall behind him for support. Pepper remained standing near the shower, pen and pad in her hands. He shook his head lightly as he began his wobbly walk to the stall in what could only be described as seeing a toddler taking his first steps, but after a few close calls, Tony made it to the shower stall.

"I'll be out in five minutes."

"If not, I'll make Jarvis leave the cold water on only," she gave him a fake smile. Pepper turned around and walked out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Tony closed the door to the shower and allowed the water stream to hit his face. The liquid warmness on his skin felt great, and even though he had not soaped himself yet, he already felt so much cleaner than he had felt inside the cave.

_Cave?_

"Oh, shit! The cave!"

After almost slipping on the tiled floor due to his wet feet, Tony ran out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, calling for his assistant's name. Pepper had already been inside the room selecting his clothes for the day, and when she turned around to find out why the man who had just been throwing up his insides was now wide awake and screaming, she screamed as well.

"OH, MY GOD! TONY!" Her face turned to the side and she thrust her palms in front of her face. "For the LOVE of God! Put SOMETHING on!"

"What?" Tony snapped at her before looking down at himself. In his haste to come out of the bathroom once the memories of his last timeline returned to him, he had forgotten that he had _just _been in the shower, completely naked.

"What's going on?! _Oh_,_ shit_!" A male voice resounded from the entrance of Tony's room, and when Tony turned around to face the newcomer, he found Happy to be in a similar position as Pepper's, trying his best to avoid looking directly at his boss's buttocks. "Dammit, is he still drunk?"

"I don't know!" Pepper screamed, her eyes welded shut.

"Jesus!" Tony spat as he grabbed hold of the blanket on his bed. He wrapped it around his lower body, covering most of what neither Happy nor Pepper wanted to see before clearing his throat. "You can unclench now."

Both of his subordinates opened one eye first and then the other until they were sure there was nothing more to see, and only then did their hands come down from the perceived protection of Tony Stark au naturel. Pepper sighed in relief while Happy shook his head at his boss. "Are we good here, now? I think I might have to go wash my eyes with holy water."

"Yes, we're good, Hap. Go!"

Happy eyed Pepper with a look that she knew meant he was checking with her to make sure _she _was alright, and when she nodded to him, he felt confident enough to leave the poor woman with their loony boss. "I'll be downstairs."

As Harold walked down the stairs, a silent moment passed between employer and employee, broken only by Pepper's loud sigh. "What the hell did you put in your drink last night? You're acting worse than ever. Is this because you don't want to sit in that meeting today? Because you can forget it! I'm tired of rescheduling it for you!"

"No, it's not, I just…" Tony exhaled. "It's nothing, sorry. I'mma go…" he pointed behind him with his thumb, and Pepper nodded. The assistant returned her attention to the closet, still visibly shaky but quickly recovering and Tony returned to the bathroom, leaving the damp blanket on the floor.

He walked into the shower and lathered, rinsed and repeated very swiftly before he jumped out of the shower and dried himself. He then wrapped a towel around his waist before peeking outside the bathroom door to make sure there was no one to scare again. As he had expected, Pepper had returned downstairs after leaving an entire outfit ready for him lying on the bed, so he walked up to the mattress and began to get dressed.

"Jarvis; time and date?"

"May 25th, 2012; 10:30 AM."

Tony then looked down at his bracelet and noted the charge was at 79%. _I need to take advantage of being here and analyze the algorithm before I jump somewhere else. At least I'm not trapped in the cave anymore, and neither is Pepper._

"God, Pepper," he mumbled as he finished dressing up. Even if the previous timeline had not disappeared, he felt a little bit better that she was no longer alive to be used as toy by Raza and his men. He looked down at his hands and noticed how they still tingled with the sensation of her skin on his. The memories were coming back with more detail now, and the pain of losing her again pressed down on his chest.

"Are you ready, Tony?" The ever-ready strawberry-blonde asked from the bottom of the stairs.

"Yup, Pep." Tony answered as he walked down to the first floor, temporarily putting aside the multiple inquires in his head.

xxxXXXxxx

"Well, that's all, then," Tony smiled at his business partners via the webcam located in his private office in the mansion. "I'll make sure to read those reports."

The men on the other side of the world bowed their heads at the billionaire before saying their goodbyes and the screen went dark. Tony let out a sigh of relief as he began pulling on his tie. Pepper was already organizing the reports they had received via fax during the meeting, covering them with colorful sticky notes filled with her neat handwriting.

Tony stared at her in silence, secretly enjoying her presence, a smile forming on his face. _Maybe I don't need to go anywhere else. I can stay here. I'll have to start all over again with her, but at least now I know how._

The woman groaned when she found a term on the reports they had received that she did not agree with, so she dragged a chair toward Tony's desk, sat in it and pulled out a highlighter practically from thin air. "Tony," she began as she made notes on the paper she held in her hands. "These numbers are not right. I remember that you specifically told them that the output needed to be increased by 45%. This report says they've only accomplished 25.6%."

Tony leaned over the desk to stare at the section of the report Pepper's finger pointed to and nodded. "I see that. Maybe we should go in person and visit the factory. Book us both on a flight for tomorrow."

Pepper's head snapped up to stare at him with a confused look on her face before she fervidly shook her head. "Tony, did you forget what I told you last week? I'm going to be off starting tomorrow."

Tony was taken aback, pretending to have forgotten something he was not even aware he had been told in the first place, and in this case, he was not pretending he did not remember; he truly had no way of remembering what he had not experienced himself. "Oh, yeah…uhm…I did forget."

"Sorry," she smiled at him. "But I can still get your jet ready to take you to Taiwan, tomorrow."

"Sure, why not."

"OK. I'll do that," she stated as she passed him a stack of the reports she had already reviewed for him so he could give them a second look. Tony grabbed the pile of papers from her and placed them on his side of the desk. He then grabbed the first paper and pulled it closer to his face, acting as if he was reading it intently. A few minutes of silence passed between them before Tony turned to face her and spoke.

"Hey, Pep?"

"Yeah?" She answered, her eyes still glued to the reports.

"Am I Iron Man?"

Pepper chuckled. "Yes, Tony. You are Iron Man."

"Huh," Tony mused. "Is Stane, dead?"

"You mean that backstabbing son-of-a-bitch who paid to have you killed? Yes, he is dead." She swapped the yellow highlighter in her hand for a pink one.

"Have you heard anything from Rhodey?"

"Yes, actually, he called this morning to say he was going to be out of the country for a few weeks."

"How about Agent Coulson? Have you seen him around?"

"Not since the press conference where you admitted to being a superhero, no."

"Oh, so you _do_ think I'm a superhero?" He gave her his boyish smile even though she was not staring directly at him. "Did I finally find someone to be my wildly conflicted girlfriend, who knows my secret identity?"

Pepper scoffed. "If you did, you haven't told me."

_Awesome_, Tony thought. _No divorce, no wife, no affair, no dead kid, no cave, and still Iron Man. Third time's the charm, right?_

"Hey, Pepper."

"Uhm?"

"Make sure to tell Happy to come pick me up for my flight tomorrow. I don't feel like driving."

Pepper's eyes looked up at him, and she furrowed her brows, searching and waiting for the punch line to come. When it did not, she chuckled lightly and shook her head. "I guess you're still a little bit hangover."

"What? Why? Happy doesn't feel like driving me?"

"Very funny, Tony. You know Happy won't be here tomorrow either."

"What? I gave both of you guys the day off? Did you catch me drunk?"

Pepper chuckled. "No, you were perfectly sober when we asked you for _two_ weeks off. I even have the copy of the form with your signature of approval."

"Wow, I'm a very generous boss."

"That you are. I don't think any other employer would have let his two closest employees go on a vacation at the same time."

"So, where are you going again? Maybe I'll join you."

Pepper laughed aloud. "Sure, Tony! I'm sure Happy will be thrilled to share his wedding anniversary vacation with his boss! Can you imagine that?" She laughed even more.

"Happy is married?"

Pepper scoffed. "What game are you playing, Mr. Stark? Of course Happy is married!"

"To –" he began, but then his eyes caught the glimmer of the rings on Pepper's left hand. His eyes then flew to her smiling face and he felt the blood leave his head and rush to his feet. He stood up abruptly from his chair, almost stumbling on the carpet below him, but steadying himself nonetheless. "Uh, I have to, uh…go run some… diagnostics in the lab. Are you…OK here?"

"Sure, no problem," she looked up at him. "Are you OK, Tony? You look pale. Do you want me to make you something for the hangover? I can have Happy run to the –"

"NO!" He spat, startling the woman shut. "I mean, no. Thanks, Pepper, I just…remembered I really need to run this data."

"Well, alright. I'll have the reports ready for you by the time I leave."

"Yes, sure, I know. See ya, Pep!" Tony turned around and headed to the door. His hand reached the knob and was about turn it when Pepper called his name. He swallowed hard and put a smile on his face before turning to look at her. "Yeah?"

"You haven't told Happy about the surprise, right? I mean, you were so out of it last night, I was afraid you'd let it slip."

"Surprise?" Tony asked. "I'm still fuzzy on that. Which surprise?"

"You know, the baby. He doesn't know I'm pregnant yet. I plan to tell him tomorrow when we arrive in Aruba."

Tony plastered a fake smile on his face, and shook his head. "Nope. Didn't tell him. Not a word. Don't worry."

Pepper sighed. "Thank you, Tony. You're the best."

"Yeah-hum. I am." He gave her another fake smile before he turned on his heels and ran down to the basement as fast as his wobbly legs could take him.

xxxXXXxxx

_Married? Pregnant with his kid? Fucking ARUBA?_

Tony held his head with his hands on his temples, staring at the images of Happy and Pepper's wedding, which had taken place three years ago, and in which he had been the fucking best man; he could not believe this happy horseshit. Apparently, the cheerful couple had gotten very close when Tony had been in Afghanistan, and married shortly after his return. In this timeline, Ivan Vanko was serving a life sentence in Russia, which had left Tony with plenty of time to find the new element his arc reactor sported. If anything good would come out of this timeline, it was that he was hopeful there was no way for Pepper to fall prey to palladium poisoning.

The scientist eyed his bracelet as he took it off his wrist and connected it to his computer. The algorithm would take a while to upload to his server, and in the meantime he planned to write down his observations to analyze them more thoroughly. _I have until 10 at night, at least. That's for sure._

As he took down his notes, he realized that he had woken up around the same time in every jump. He also noted that he seemed to lose about 10% of the charge from one jump to the other. When he had woken in his basement in the first jump, the charge in the _88MPH_ had been in the nineties. During his time in Afghanistan it had been in the eighties, and now –his third jump, it was in the seventies.

_This thing will keep jumping me until I run out of power or figure out how to stop it. I can't recharge the reactor in this, and I don't have time to make a new one. I REALLY didn't think this shit through._

Tony hit his forehead with his fist a few times, forcing his mind to recall more information from his jumps. _Every time I've jumped I've been unconscious, with the exception of the first time. If I stay awake all night tonight, would that keep me here? Probably not, but it's worth a shot._

"The upload of the complex algorithm is complete, sir." The AI informed his creator.

"Awesome. I need you to decode it."

"Will do, sir. Estimated completion time for decoding is 36 hours."

"WHAT?"

"36 hours."

"I heard you the first time, Jarvis!"

"Then why did you make me repeat it?"

"Ugh! Shut it! Can't you make it any faster?"

"I'm afraid not. The final diagnostics would not be practical."

"What can you give me in," he stared at his watch. It was nearly five o'clock. "Five hours?"

"Nothing worth reading, sir."

"Dammit!"

"Tony?" His PA called from the bottom of the stairs as she keyed in her passcode. The door unlocked without complaint and she walked inside to stand next to Tony, her eyes flying to the familiar faces on the screen. "Hey, you're looking at our wedding pictures?"

Tony's fingers scrambled to the screen to close the windows and cleared his throat. "Yeah, well…you got me thinking about it with your little escapade and all."

"Okay…" She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly not convinced of his reasoning but decided to let it go. "Anyway, the reports are ready for you in your office. I've scheduled a maid service to stop by every three days, and every two days someone will come to refill your fridge. You jet is ready for tomorrow, and I've arranged for a taxi to come pick you up at noon. Your bags are packed and by the door. Did I forget anything?"

"Nope. Thanks, Pep." He smiled fondly at her, staring at her face as if it was the last time he would do so. For all he knew, his words could become prophetic, so he threw caution to the wind and grabbed one of her hands in his. "You've always taken such good care of me."

"That's my job." She smiled back.

"Right," he mumbled, slowly and carefully letting go of her hand when he heard Happy calling her name from upstairs. "Your husband's waiting for you."

"Thank you for letting us go, Tony. We really needed the vacation."

"Least I can do for my favorite girl." He muttered back and meant it.

Pepper gave him a smile and leaned over to hug him and he immediately returned her embrace. Tony closed his eyes tightly, never before knowing until now how painful a hug could feel. He hoped she did not notice him smelling her hair and rubbing his cheek on hers until she finally broke off their grip and began walking toward the door. She stood by the entrance, her feet swaying to the undecided dance of someone who still has something to say but does not know how to start. Finally, after much thought, she cleared her throat and shook her head before staring back at him.

"Tony, please don't do anything stupid while we're out. Don't blow up anything or anyone, and make sure the house is still standing when we come back."

Tony had the decency to scoff and crossed his arms over his chest. "Come on, Potts. You make it sound as if I'm going to challenge a terrorist to a cage match or some crazy shit like that. I'm not that stupid, I'll have you know."

Pepper rolled her eyes at him and nodded. "Just making sure. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?"

Tony swallowed the lump in his throat, his eyes taking in as much of her as he could. "That will be all, Miss Potts."

Tony followed the sway of her hips with his eyes until they disappeared up the stairs. That night, Tony kept himself awake with a few bottles of scotch, and learned two things by the time he was done with them: the flight that was supposed to take Happy and Pepper to Aruba crashed in the ocean, leaving behind no survivors; and, two: staying awake did not stop the jump.

* * *

**A/N:** There's a little bit more Tony/Pepper interaction for you guys; sorry it's not the kind you're expecting, but something is usually better than nothing, right? I know some of my Faithful Readers are hoping for some warm, fluffy Pepperony scenes, but that's not really the point of this story. That was done in 30 Days, and the point of this story is to show how far Tony would go to get Pepper back and what he is willing to sacrifice to do so. So just remember, as you guys anxiously wait for that one world where everything is right and Tony and Pepper can be together again, Tony is looking for that as well, so you feel what he's feeling. He wants those moments too, so just hang in there and maybe you'll find those moments again along with him. See ya at the next chapter, it's gonna be a BLAST!


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

His eyes first landed on the fireplace, burning brightly and beautifully despite the time of the day. Above its grandeur he saw three dangling Christmas stockings: one for Jarvis, one for Pepper and one for himself.

_Christmas?_

The giant lit up tree next to the chimney that caught his attention next confirmed the festivities upon them, and had it not been for the over-the-top stuffed bunny in the corner of the room by the stairs –whose hands resembled saggy breasts, for some reason – he would have heard whatever Pepper was yelling at him about.

_Pepper?_

His eyes landed on her for a second. He blinked a few times and then narrowed his eyes at her. All he could concentrate on was her face; her lips were moving fast and her face was contorted in anger, but he could not force his ears to make sense of what was being said.

"Uhm, guys?" Finally a voice he did not immediately recognize made it to his eardrums. "Do we need to worry about that?"

Tony's face moved to his left stare at the woman in question, who looked vaguely familiar to him, standing a few feet from where he and Pepper stood. He followed the path of her hand as she pointed to the television behind her. He was taken aback when he saw an aerial image of the outside of his mansion with a tagline at the bottom of the screen which read: _Stark issues threat_.

_BOOM!_

By the time Tony looked behind him, the missile was already inside his living room. The blast sent him flying away with a force he had never experienced before, not even when the mortar that gave him the glowing nightlight in his chest had hit him. His entire body levitated off the ground, aiming backwards to whatever was behind him, arms and legs flailing in every direction. He blinked his eyes from the dust and turned his face to the last place he had seen Pepper only to see his PA suffering the same fate as he.

_Pepper!_

A second later, both of them hit the concrete wall behind him with a loud thud, an extreme force he already knew could be lethal for her delicate frame if it hit the right spot. His mind was screaming that he snap out of his confusion and run to her, but his body was having none of it, refusing to respond with the agility he so desperately needed at the moment.

_Dammit! PEPPER!_

After his back bounced off the wall, he rolled down to the floor, the air expelled from his lungs. He coughed as he tried to take in deep breaths to compensate for the knockout, but there just was not enough air in the world to recompense for the lack of the much needed compound inside him. His ears rang loudly, adding to his already crippling disorientation, but the distortion of his current reality did not prevent him from somehow sensing the blast that had just made a hole in his home was only just the beginning.

Defying his body's incoordination he sat up where he lay, spat dirt from his mouth and looked up from the floor. The woman who had warned him about the incoming attack –which he now recognized as Maya Hansen, was lying on her stomach on the floor, eyes closed and small debris from the ceiling dripping down on her. He twisted his body to his left side and instinctively extended his arm toward Pepper. She was just a couple of feet away from him, face down, eyes closed, her clothes were dirtied and torn just as his. "Pepper, are you OK?"

Everything around him was moving in slow motion. He was not even sure if his words had actually left his mouth, as he could hardly hear anything at all other than the ringing caused by the loud explosion near them. He tapped his right ear with his hand, hoping to speed up the recovery time of his hearing. He looked back to where his glass wall had once been, and his eyes caught notice of the helicopters coming by. He also noticed now that pieces of Iron Man armor were flying around the room, being propelled by their own individual flight stabilizers, banging into the floor, ceiling and walls but seeming to change direction with every move he made.

_Oh, shit! What the fuck is going on?!_

His thoughts were interrupted when a large piece of the ceiling fell a few feet away from him. His eyes flew to the ceiling above him as it began crumbling, slow at first but then too fast for him to move completely out of the way. Despite his attempt at crawling away from the debris, a second giant piece of concrete fell, this one actually landing on his right foot, pinning him to where he lay. He bit his lip to prevent the scream from coming out; the last thing he wanted to do was scare his beloved girl. Some of the pieces were too heavy for the already unstable floor so they went right through it, landing in the basement and taking whatever was in their way with them.

"Pepper, wake up!" He pleaded to his PA as loud as possible after he swallowed the scream of pain. Three of the flying armor pieces smacked into the wall above her as he screamed, and then took off around the room again. He tried again to catch her attention, and after accompanying his efforts with a shake of her hand, a small amount of relief dawned on him when he saw her head twitch. "That's it, Pep. Wake up; we gotta get out of here!"

Pepper opened one eye and the other, eyeing everything around her with the same expression of confusion Tony felt. She bent her elbows under her as she tried pushing herself to a sitting position but the pain on her right side made her scream instead. She tumbled down onto the ground again, gritting her teeth to keep the worst of the ache from coming out of her. "Tony! There's something…"

Her words were drowned by the third, second and fourth missiles that hit the bottom of the mansion. The two inhabitants of the Stark home felt the ground below them shift, making them both freeze on the spot. Pepper's hand reached out to him, and he intertwined their hands together, staring at her with wild eyes. "It's alright, Pepper. It's gonna be OK. Just, try to get up. Get out of here." He told her with an eerie calm he did not truly feel.

Pepper nodded to him, wanting to believe every word he had just said, but she knew better. Her face looked away from him for a brief moment and she stared down at her injury, which was out of his line of sight to her relief. The wound in her body was not one that she would consider minor. In fact, it was one that even a layman such as her would call _life-threatening_.

_There's so much blood. _To whom it belonged at this point, it was difficult to say.

She returned her attention to the scientist with a face that did not betray her true state of affairs. Tony by now was trying to pull his foot away from under the debris with more effort that she thought possible given the circumstances, causing a little bit of pain to her hand that was linked with his. There was no way in hell he would ever be able to lift that ton of concrete and metal off him, but he ended up not having to do so at all when yet another missile landed in the structure.

The impact was as much as the home was going to withstand, and as their eyes shared a silent understanding of what was to come, Pepper and Tony began falling down to the basement surrounded by the drop of everything that had once belonged to them. There was so much happening around them it was difficult to focus on just one thing, so when their hands separated from each other, the only physical connection that made sense between them was lost.

"Pepper!"

"Tony!"

And then everything went silent and dark.

xxxXXXxxx

The only light he could find near him the next time he opened his eyes belonged to his banged up arc reactor, and even that tightly packed brightness was not sufficient to help him determine where he was, or how long he had been there. He could hardly feel his limbs, and the thought that he was probably missing a couple of them crossed his mind. He took in a deep breath and released it in shallow exhales, trying his best to remain calm.

_Did I jump again?_ He wondered, dread filling his heart. _Please tell me I didn't jump straight in to my fucking grave!_

He tried moving his arms and legs but there was a huge weight on his entire body. He needed to look at his bracelet, make sure it still worked. He needed to find out what time it was, what year he was in, and most importantly, who the fuck had the balls to attack his woman in the comfort of his own fucking home.

_Pepper._

The pure need to find her was not enough to force his constricted body to move, so he opted for doing the only thing he could do for now: scream her name at the top of his lungs. The first three tries were unsuccessful, but to his instant relief, the fourth one was not in vain.

_"Tony?"_

"Pepper?" Tony could not quite pinpoint where the sound was coming from, but it sounded near enough to understand her words.

_ "Tony, oh, my God! Are you alright?"_

"Yeah, yeah, are you?"

_"I…"_ He heard her hesitate for a moment and Tony's blood turned ice cold. _"I can't really see very well, but I think I'm OK."_

"Are you sure?"

_"Yes, yes, I'm sure. Where are we?"_

"I, uhm, I think we're under the rubble." He reasoned. "Do you know how long we've been out here?"

_"No, I was unconscious until I heard you calling my name. What's going to happen, Tony? What are we going to do?"_

"Don't…don't panic, Pep." He tried to comfort her despite his own doubts jumping to the surface. "I'm sure search and rescue is already working on trying to get us out of here. It's just…it'll just take them some time to get this shit off us."

_"You're probably right. Yes, yes, you're right. What about Maya Hansen?"_

"Uhm…I…I don't really know, Pepper." He responded, just now remembering the woman had been there with them. What was she doing in his home anyway? Was she here to try to get back together after a decade of not seeing each other? It had only been one night between them; did she really think she was that special? "Pepper?"

_"Yes, Tony?"_

"I love you," he uttered to her, not sure where their relationship stood in this timeline, but seeing no good end in sight he was going to take his chances. Besides, he had a good feeling about them after seeing their stockings together, and the fact that she had not been wearing her usual business clothes around his house. "I love you _very_ much, Honey."

_"I love you too, Tony." _Tony smiled at her words._ "And, I'm sorry for making you eat gluten-free waffles this morning; I know how much you hate them."_

Tony chuckled. "You made me eat gluten-free waffles and I had _our_ place blown up." He emphasized the possessive noun when referring to the house, and when she did not correct him, he just knew she lived with him. "I think we're even." He added for good measure and the sound of her laughter made his smile wider.

_"Jerk,"_ she said with a hint of a grin. _"Think about that next time you threaten a terrorist and challenge him to a cage match."_

Tony's smile disappeared at her words. "What was that Pepper?"

_"I said: Think about that next time you challenge a terrorist to a cage match. What were you thinking, Tony, giving the Mandarin our home address? Maybe you should've just asked him to come over for tea before he blew us up!"_

Tony's mind was racing. _Mandarin? Who the fuck is the Mandarin? I challenged a terrorist? I…I CHALLENGED a TERRORIST! Holy shit! No, I didn't! No, I didn't! _He repeated quietly to himself as a very important memory of the last timeline returned to him.

_"Tony, please don't do anything stupid while we're out. Don't blow up anything or anyone, and make sure the house is still standing when we come back."_

_ Tony had the decency to scoff and crossed his arms over his chest. "Come on, Potts. You make it sound as if I'm going to challenge a terrorist to a cage match or some crazy shit like that. I'm not that stupid, I'll have you know."_

"Is that how the algorithm is deciding where I go? Is it taking the last conversation between me and Pepper and extrapolating from that?" He mumbled to himself, wanting more than ever to free himself from the building above him. _Think, Stark! Think!_

_"Tony, are you OK?"_

"Yes, sweetheart!" He responded immediately. "Just thinking. Are you still alright?"

_"Yes, but I'm getting sleepy."_

"I don't think you should sleep, Pep. I mean, we should probably stop yelling, but don't fall asleep."

_"OK."_

_OK, _he continued in his mind_, so the first time I jumped I spoke to Rhodey, not Pepper, but there was no way I could've spoken to her, anyway. What did I say? What did I say to trigger the algorithm to take me to where it did? I can't think straight…_He shook his head._ Then… the second time…I didn't technically even talk to Pepper, so that can't be it. It just can't…Fuck, what if we both die here? What if I die before I can save her? What would happen to her if I die?_

Tony began hyperventilating. He was beginning to feel the quality of oxygen thinning out. His rapid breathing was filling the small space with carbon dioxide at a faster rate than he cared for. _Calm down; calm the fuck down._

"Pepper?"

The genius waited for a minute, but when he did not hear a response, he tried again, louder this time. "Baby, are you still there? Pepper?"

_No, no, no. Not again, not so soon. Not because of me again!_

_ "Mr. Stark?"_

"Pepper?"

_"Mr. Stark? I'm Dave; I'm a paramedic. Are you hurt anywhere? Is there anyone there with you?"_

"Did you get to Pepper?"

_"Is Miss Potts with you?"_

"No, but she's near. Can you get to her, first? I'm fine."

_"We're doing everything we can, but there's a lot of wreckage. It took us four hours to get down here."_

"How long have we been here?"

_"It's hard to say, but it's almost midnight."_

"Midnight?"

_"Yes, sir. Now, remain calm and don't overdo it; we'll get to you very soon."_

"Pepper. Please find her first. She's not answering me anymore."

_"OK, Mr. Stark."_ The paramedic responded, knowing that the man would not calm down until he knew his girlfriend was being taken care of. _"Miss Potts? Can you hear us? Miss Potts, if you can hear us but can't speak, that's alright. Can you make a sound? Can you move a little bit? Can you bang on something?"_

The more Tony paid attention to the sounds around him as he waited for any response to come from Pepper, the clearer the sounds of the rescue crew became to him. He could hear the beeping of reversing vehicles, the sound of sledgehammers, and the faint static of the two-way radios.

"Pepper? PEPPER!"

_ "Mr. Stark, yelling will only get you agitated. We're searching for Miss Potts."_

"PEPPER!" Tony ignored the paramedic's response. "POTTS! ANSWER ME!"

_"We found her!"_ Tony heard someone other than Dave scream near him. _"We need a defibrillator over here!"_

"Defibrillator? No! NO!" Tony began screaming again, and almost did not feel the hand surrounding his ankle. The grip on him became tighter, and had his right foot not been broken, the billionaire would have kicked his way out of the rubble.

_"We got you, Mr. Stark. We got you!"_ Dave said with more confidence this time. The light coming from the refractors installed to help the crew see in the dead of the night began filtering through the rubble and down on the genius. Eventually the debris that covered his upper body was removed, and Tony took a deep breath.

"Where's is she? Is she alive?" Tony asked between gasps, suddenly feeling as if the world was spinning too fast. His chest felt as if it was compressing, and his vision was getting clouded. _What's happening to me? Am I dying?_

"He's going into shock! I need some help here!" Dave yelled over his shoulder and three other paramedics rushed to him with a gurney in their hands. They placed it by Tony's side and between all four of them they lifted the scientist, strapping him onto it in one swift move. "Mr. Stark, can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Tony did not respond, so Dave flashed a light into the inventor's eyes and he was happy to see that his pupils were reacting to the exercise in a normal manner. He then grabbed Tony's wrist and clocked his heartbeat. "He's losing it! He's going into panic mode! Hit him!"

"Pepper? Where's Pepper? Did you find her?" Tony finally spoke again, waved his hands in the air and tried grabbing onto the shirt of the paramedics as they carried him to an ambulance.

"No. We found someone but it's not Miss Potts. Who else was with you?" Dave looked down at Tony, trying to keep him busy so that he would not see what the other paramedics were doing next to him.

"Hansen…Maya Hansen…but, Pepper…She was next to me!"

"Anyone else?"

"No. No one else. Please find her." Dave grabbed his radio in his hand and called in the name of the other rescued person before returning his attention to the disheveled man.

"We're still searching. We will find her."

"Please…Pepper…_please_…" Tony's mind was solely focusing on his girl, so by the time he realized there was an IV line in his arm which contained a muscle relaxant, it was too late for him to yank it off.

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**A/N:** Anyone catching the clues in the chapters? Who wants to take a guess at where Tony ends up next?


	6. Chapter 5

**A/N: **If you like the overall situation of this chapter, you should check out inques28's _And they lived happily._ I had the pleasure of beta-ing her story and a situation similar to this one appears in her fic. She is much nicer to Pepperony than my cruel heart of ice is, though, so you might like her version of this best. No stealing intended of her idea or work, it just happened to help serve my evil purpose :)

_**Also, please note rating is M for a reason! Avert ye eyes, youngsters!**_

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**Chapter 5**

The sound of the waves hit him first; second were the singing of the seagulls above him. He looked to either side of him and noted the rays of light were being randomly blocked by the approaching clouds. This time it only took him two seconds to realize he had jumped yet again. He stared down at his bracelet and read the current charge: 59%. At least one theory of his was proving to be correct: he was losing ten percent of the charge in every jump.

He had no idea what had happened to Pepper in the last jump, but something told him he did not want to know. That timeline was now gone – he hoped – and what truly mattered to him was whatever fucked up situation he was going to face in this continuity. As opposed to most of the other times, he had now been dropped right outside his home with no life and death situation requiring his immediate attention, and while the mental scars were still fresh in his mind, he pushed them aside to carry on with the current challenge.

He took slow steps toward the entrance, finding the glass door opened wide, and the first thing he felt was the bitter cold inside the home. The fireplace was alive and burning the logs slowly, but it was apparently not sufficient to warm up the inside. The weather outside had been mild, so he could not think of a good reason why both the fireplace and the A/C would be on at such extreme temperatures. There were a few new decorations around that he did not recall having in his home, but he attributed them to Pepper's doing; if she was still alive around here, and if she lived with him in this continuity, too.

The silence on the first floor was disconcerting, so he looked up to the ceiling and stared at it with questioning eyes, and it was now he realized he had not been welcomed by his AI. His usual clock on the wall was gone, so he resorted to calling on his virtual butler to determine _when_ he was. "Jarvis; time and date?"

There was no response from the AI, but the room was getting colder.

"Jarvis?" He tried again as he walked up to the closest security station; the system seemed to be up and running with no immediately evident issues, but the temperature reading was dropping quickly. He shrugged once and began walking in the direction of the staircase to the basement so that he could override the settings of the thermostat, but the staircase was gone – a wall now stood in its place. _OK, did I move my lab somewhere else?_

He turned on his heels and he began walking around the home, opening every door on the first floor and finding each room looking slightly different than he remembered them. The only room that looked exactly the same to him was the kitchen. His skin began trembling with the frigid temperature around him, and the shiver that ran down his spine reminded him of a similar situation he had already encountered before.

_The concrete floors of the basement were cold as icicles, forcing Tony to try and walk on the edge of his feet. _

"_JARVIS! What game are you playing? This is not funny! Pepper's fucking cold and so am I!"_

_ Again, his AI did not respond._

_ "Son of a bitch," Tony mumbled, picking up his pace and reaching the control panel of the house. He input the code and the small cover unlocked, allowing Tony to change the settings of the A.C.'s central unit._

_ "That outta do it," he said as he walked to the servers to check on his online friend. "Jarvis, wake up. Jarvis?"_

Tony's heart began beating faster. He ran out of the kitchen and returned to the security station he had checked just moments before but this time he noticed a small warning icon blinking on the top corner of the screen he had missed the first time. He double-tapped the icon and it pulled up the records of the house. His eyes went wide when he saw a familiar log: _Power failure, June 29, 2012 7:15PM_.

The current time and date was June 30, 2012, 10:00 AM.

_Oh, my God!_ Tony almost tripped and fell on his face as he rushed to the stairs that led to his bedroom. He could not believe his luck! He was back to the day Pepper had died, back to the day his life had gone to hell! As he ran up the stairs, memories of how he had woken up that faithful day returned to him.

_Tony awoke with a startle, his nostrils dry as hell. He tried taking a deep breath, but the cold air around him made it difficult. He opened one eye and stared at his alarm clock on the nightstand, the red numbers showing it was past 10 AM._

That's weird_, he thought, not remembering Jarvis trying to wake him up at 7 AM as he always did. Maybe, by some miracle of artificial intelligence engineering, Jarvis had understood that he and Pepper had returned home late last night, and after hours of tossing under the sheets, they were both too exhausted to get up at normal times._

As he neared the last three steps, his ears caught the distinctive sound of heaving, breathing and moaning, and then the peculiar sound of flesh-against-flesh. His excitement at the possibility of having returned on time to save Pepper temporarily blocked his common sense, and it was not until his eyes rested on the naked strawberry-blonde ridding hard on someone's lap that he realized everything was not as it seemed; especially when he recognized the male voice telling Pepper that she was _tight as hell_.

The voice did not belong to him, but to a man he had thought to be dead. "That's it, Pepper! Oh, yeah, that's right!" Obadiah Stane said between clenched teeth. The old man's hands flew to grab Pepper's ass and he squeezed hard enough to put dimples in her flesh, guiding the woman on top of him and helping her increase her speed. "Almost…al-most…ugh!"

Tony Stark's mouth went slack.

A few seconds after he was mentally scarred for life, the movement on the bed stopped and Pepper was haphazardly thrown to the side. She did not move from where she landed on the bed, her back to him and her partner, and Obadiah did not make any attempt to check on her or even apologize for what he had done. A few moments after that, Stane seemed to have recovered his senses and was now standing up from the bed.

Tony swore he would never question Happy or Rhodey when they complained about the times they had been left with no option but to drag his naked, drunk ass somewhere ever again. The imagery was as traumatizing as they had described it to him.

After avoiding looking at Stane's bare backside as he walked near Tony and into the bathroom, the billionaire's eyes fell on the woman. She was very still and in the same position she had been in when he had found her that morning she had died, sans the blankets tightly wrapped around her form. He swallowed hard as he took a few steps toward her, and as he neared her his heart broke.

Her eyes were closed but the tears that ran down her cheeks were clear as day. Her breasts sported recent bruises, and the skin around wrists looked as if they had been burned. Tony's eyes then looked down at the floor, and there he found a short rope, a small whip, and a pair of handcuffs. The sight of the artifacts made him want to throw up and then eat it back up as he found such a nasty act more appealing than what his mind was putting together for him at this point.

The door to the restroom opened and Obadiah walked out of it, fully dressed and with a wide, satisfied smile on his face. Tony clenched his jaw and his knuckles went white in anger when his eyes saw Stane smack Pepper's butt, followed by his complimenting about the _great fuck she was_. Tony lunged himself at the man but to his surprise, he went right through him.

It took a moment for the genius to register what had happened, and by the time it did, Stane was long gone. He heard the front door slam loudly, and not a moment after the echoing sound ended, it was replaced by an even louder and more heart-wrenching sound: Pepper's painful sobs.

_No._

He stood up from the floor and ran toward the light redhead. He kneeled on the floor next to her side of the bed and tried to caress her cheek, but just as it had happened with Stane, his hand went right through her face. Tony pulled his hand to his own face for a second before he tried touching her again. Unfortunately for him, the result was the same.

_Why can't I touch her? Why did I…Wait, they didn't see me, or hear me…so…shit!_

Tony's head hung, and he took a deep breath he quickly exhaled.

_I'm dead. I'm fucking dead! Me and my BIG mouth! _The memory of his mistake returned to him.

"_**Tony, are you OK?"**_

_ "Yes, sweetheart!" He responded immediately. "Just thinking. Are you still alright?"_

_**"Yes, but I'm getting sleepy."**_

_ "I don't think you should sleep, Pep. I mean, we should probably stop yelling, but don't fall asleep."_

_**"OK."**_

_**OK**__, he continued in his mind, __**so the first time I jumped I spoke to Rhodey, not Pepper, but there was no way I could've spoken to her, anyway. What did I say? What did I say to trigger the algorithm to take me to where it did? I can't think straight**__…He shook his head. __**Then… the second time…I didn't technically even talk to Pepper, so that can't be it. It just can't…Fuck, what if we both die here? What if I die before I can save her? What would happen to her if I die?**_

_This_, he thought. _This is what would happen to her if I died._

His eyes returned to the love of his life, and while his pores itched to touch her, to pull her closer to him and tell her everything was going to be alright, he knew he would do neither. His attempts at touching her were unsuccessful, and he did not dare to again claim to her everything was going to turn out OK. He had been telling her that too many times, and too many times it had turned out to be completely untrue.

_No more lying, Pepper. I won't lie to you anymore._

He remained by her side for an eternity until she finally stopped crying and got up from the bed. His eyes followed her as she walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. He knew in his ethereal state he would probably be able to walk through the damned door if he so pleased, but he figured his presence inside would do her no good if she did not even know he was there for her.

Sighing loudly, he stood up and opted to leave the room instead, and he headed to downstairs. There was no sign of Obadiah anywhere, and if he had been still around, Tony was sure he would have pranked the shit out of him with some poltergeist-wannabe stunts; he had not watched all those scary movies and not learned a scary trick or two.

By now Tony was certain that his jumps lasted for only 24 hours, so he had plenty of time to kill. He flinched; maybe killing was not the proper word in this case.

He walked up to the wall where the staircase to his basement had once been, and stared at it for a long time. It was only natural that if the genius had died for whatever reason, Stane would have inherited everything that had once belonged to him and had done whatever he wanted with his home. He would not put it past him to have wanted to seal away any sign of the billionaire in his own home, but he figured whatever trinkets of his that still remained had been thanks to Pepper's intervention. This was Obadiah's wildest dream: a dead Tony and a fortune it would take him a lifetime to waste. To Tony, however, it was a nightmare in the making. If he ever got back to a reality where he had an opportunity to make things better, the first thing he was going to do besides making sure no harm came to Pepper's way, was to make sure he wrote down a will. He was sure as hell he did not want the fruit of his parents' hard work ending up in the hands of Obadiah Stane.

_I can't believe Dad and I trusted him; that sleazy, bald, son of a bitch._

The sound of incoming steps from the bedroom made his eyes stare its way, and as he expected, Pepper appeared in front of him in no time. She was wearing a white bath robe, no shoes, her uncombed damp hair rested on her shoulders, and her right hand held a lit cigarette. She made a beeline for the liquor cabinet and took out a couple of bottles of scotch. Tony would have scoffed at the irony, but even that was too painful to do.

She eventually sat on the couch in the living room with her legs placed neatly under her, and turned on the television to the stock market channel. She eyed the SI –no longer Stark Industries but Stane Industries – stock points standing with longing before she puffed out a cloud of smoke from her mouth. "At least your company is still standing, Tony."

The billionaire, who was yet to move from his spot by the wall, moved his eyes from the television to face her. She popped the cap of the bottle in her lap and took a big gulp of the liquid, followed by another inhale of her cigarette. "Not everything is lost if your legacy is still around, right?"

Tony was as at a loss, but he still walked up to her and sat next to her on the couch. He waved a hand in front of her face but she did not react, and instead she lifted the remote with her hand, pointed it to the sensor, and changed the channel to one that was showing _Days of Our Lives_.

Tony could not help to smile at the memory. Just as when he had been invited to her home, here they were; the two of them sitting on the couch, alone, watching the crazy soap opera and lazing around. Tony's eyes filled with tears, and had he not been biting the insides of his mouth, he would have bawled right there next to her. "Pepper," he swallowed another sob. "I don't want you to live like this. This is not what you deserve."

Pepper's attention to the television remained unchanged, and she again drank from her bottle and took the cigarette to her mouth once more. She cleared her throat loudly as some of the smoke ran down the wrong pipe. Her eyes were glued to the television, but Tony could see that her mind was not paying attention to the antics of Doctor Drake Ramoray anymore when a tear rolled down her face. She did not even attempt to wipe it off and it splat down on her robe only to be followed by many more.

When she was done smoking, she had also finished the first bottle of scotch. She tossed the bottle behind her and it shattered on impact with the floor. Her hands then grabbed the second bottle and she opened it with an ease that came from having done so many, many, _many_ times before.

The soap was over by now, so she channeled surfed again at such a rapid speed Tony was not sure she was even really picking up what was on. Eventually her finger stopped pressing the button, and the screen stopped its endlessly changing. Pepper sighed loudly and shook her head at the tube.

"Why did you leave me, Tony? Why did you never come back?"

Tony's eyes moved from staring at her to the documentary playing on the _History Channel_. He was not sure what he was looking at but after a minute or so, he realized what had Pepper so upset with her life: a biography of the late Tony Stark's life.

As he followed along with the explanation of the narrator, he learned that he had never returned from Afghanistan, and that Pepper had done everything possible to keep the search for him going on until just a few days ago when the CEO of SI had decided it was time to move on. He had also learned that Stane and Pepper had wed a year ago, and he suspected the bastard had somehow forced or blackmailed Pepper into accepting becoming his wife. She was clearly not happy with him or the situation, and he would not put it past the crooked man to have exchanged the release of funds for his continued search for Pepper's hand in marriage.

By the time the documentary ended, Pepper had finished her third bottle of scotch. She angrily wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hands, dropped the empty bottle on the floor, and walked to the bedroom again. Tony followed her in silence like a lost pup. He was growing weary of this never-ending rollercoaster of painful emotions, and he almost wished that Pepper had never met him at all. It seemed that no matter what he tried, she always ended up with the shorter end of the stick, and her misery was somehow always able to be connected back to something he had done, not done, said or not said.

That night, Tony watched helplessly as Pepper popped twenty sleeping pills into her mouth, washed them down with a cold beer, and then fell asleep never to wake up again. Sadly, this time Tony could not blame her, and if he had been able to join her, he definitely would have done so. The only problem was, in this world, he was already dead.

* * *

**A/N:** It seems I might finish this story quicker than I thought. The inspiration is there, and in no short part due to your responses. We are _halfway there_, and it seems Tony and Pepper _are living on a prayer_. If you could write a chapter in this story, what would you write it about?


	7. Chapter 6

**A/N: **Some of you are catching on to what's happening. Maybe you can use this knowledge to find that keyword or phrase that leads to the next scenario? That's a challenge! However, it is not as difficult as the challenge to continue reading such a sad story, and I have to thank you all for that. I appreciate that you're still sticking around. When I, who knows everything that is happening and how the story will end, am having a hard time writing such terrible scenarios, I CANNOT picture what it must be to read the shit Tony is going through while the future is unknown.

Then again, maybe the ray of hope that the next jump will be the good one is what is helping you and Tony move on….

Or…

BTW, sorry about the mishap with the last chapter. I swapped the stories again, although I wonder how much of it was my fault this time around. I found missing CHUNKS of previous chapters for no reason when the original copy has them there. Sigh. I guess the server updates FF is doing may be messing with my mind. Sorry about that! If you were confused by the previous chapter, please go back and re-read it; you probably read the wrong one :(

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**Chapter 6**

Forty-nine percent; that was the charge of the _88MPH_ when Tony opened his eyes to see it in front of his face. This time, however, he did not rush to find out where he was, or what he was doing there. The truth was that he was utterly depressed; he had been beaten down too many times in the past five days in his travels that the resolve to fix what now seemed inevitable to him was just slipping away.

He closed his eyes again, tempted to just sleep throughout this entire jump and just wait for the next, and then the next, and then just continue sitting around and do nothing until the bracelet ran out of power, thus having him run out of time. He scoffed at himself as the familiar phrase of "running out of time" reminding him of his crazy thoughts while he stood by her grave. Why in the name of everything that is holy and almighty did he believe he could play God? Had he truly been so stupid and blind to believe his science could change fate? The only true answer to these questions was that _yes_, he indeed _had_.

"I just wanted her back." He whispered the words of a broken man. "I just wanted to be the one to make her happy. Is that too much to ask?"

"Well, it depends, Anthony. Does she want to be happy with you?"

Tony's heart nearly stopped, and his eyes snapped open.

"Because if she doesn't want to, whoever she is, then she doesn't deserve your love, _cuore_."

_Cuore. _Only one person in the world had ever called him that.

And that person had died many years ago.

The moment he felt the warm hand that had many nights tenderly caressed his face the way it was doing so right now, all of the walls he had so carefully constructed over the last twenty years came crashing down easier than his mansion had when the missiles hit it, two jumps ago. He let out a sigh of ache, and the sobs that can only come from a man that has lost it all, followed. Without looking, Tony shifted his body toward the woman standing next to him, surrounded her hips with his arms, and pressed the side of his face onto her stomach. The woman remained silent for a few more minutes, but her hand continued to try and ease her son's agony through her simple touch.

"Anthony, is she that important to you?"

"Yes," Tony responded after a sob. "She's everything to me. She makes me happy."

"If she makes you happy, then why do you cry?"

"Because I lost her, and nothing I can do is going to bring her back."

"_Cuore_, did she hurt you?"

"No."

"Did you hurt her?"

"Yes."

"Did you mean to?"

"No."

"Then if she truly loves you, she'll understand; she'll forgive you the same way I've forgiven your father so many times."

Tony finally had the courage to look up and stared at Maria Stark, who was looking down at her son with the same calm face he remembered of her sans the youthful look that had given way to her mature face. He imagined that even when she had been seconds away from death in the car accident where she and Howard had perished in, her face had probably still had been one of controlled temperament and high resolve: two things he needed right now.

He let go of her and stood up, almost immediately noticing how much taller than her he was. He leaned over his work bench and grabbed a rag and used it to wipe his face from the tears. "Dad better not see me like this, huh?"

Maria scoffed. "Your father is not here. He promised he'd stop by before sunset, but you know how he is. Once he starts a new project, he just forgets about everything else."

Tony nodded, remembering how many times Tony had reproached his father for abandoning him and his mother for weeks on end by locking himself up in his lab at SI HQ. Feeling slightly better than before, he chanced a look around him and found he was in his old home – his parents' home – back in New York. He then discretely looked down to his chest and saw the actor reactor was nowhere to be found, but he had already not expected it to be there at all.

"What is he working on now?" He casually asked as he looked around for a calendar or a clock.

"Who knows? You know I don't understand half of what he says when he gets into project mode. Only you speak that code I couldn't care less about," she said with an honest smile. "And, honestly, I'd rather not know."

Tony chuckled as his mother grabbed him by his hand and began walking him away from the lab and up the stairs to the living room. "Now, why don't you tell me about this special girl? Have we met her?"

"I, uh…" Tony began, allowing his mother to lead him to the couch. He spared a glance toward a digital watch over the chimney and saw that it was almost 4PM on November 14, 2006. "I'm not sure. Have you heard about Pepper?"

"The condiment, or…" she trailed.

Tony rolled his eyes with a smile. "No, that's her nickname. Pepper."

"Ah! No, I don't recall you talking about her…until now. Is she pretty?"

"She's beautiful, Mom. You would've loved her…" Tony said with a twinkle in his eyes but then caught his mistake. "I mean, if I hadn't screwed up so badly that I won't see her ever again and you'd gotten to meet her, you would have liked her very much."

"I'm sure I _will_, _when_ I get her to meet her. And, I'm sure your father will be thrilled, too. You know, he was starting to think you did not like women after all; seeing as you're almost 40 and haven't settled down yet..."

"What? Do you know how many woman I've been with?" Tony spat but then closed his lips when he remembered it was his mother he was talking to. "I mean…I, uhm…"

Maria shook her head. "Why don't we talk more about Pepper? Where is she from?"

"Cleveland."

"What does she do?"

"She's my…uhm…she's an accountant. A very good one, actually."

"Accountant? I'd always thought you'd fall for a scientist like you. Isn't your friend Maya a scientist?"

"Maya?"

"Yes, uhm, Hansen. Maya Hansen."

"Oh, yes, she's a…botanist. But, no, she's not my type."

"But Pepper is?"

"Absolutely." Tony's automatic response caused Maria to laugh aloud.

"So, what's her real name?"

"Virginia Potts."

"Virginia Potts," Maria nodded a few times, her eyes looking up as she thought about the name. "I don't see how that turns into 'Pepper'."

Tony chuckled. "I gave her that nickname."

"I see. How did she earn it?"

"She, uhm…" Tony began with a wide smile on his face, which told his mother how in much in love with this woman he truly was. "She found an error in one of my reports and she told her supervisor. But, he didn't believe her so the error stayed on the balance sheets. Next time she saw it again she got mad that no one took her seriously, so she…ah…she tried to talk to me directly but, you know how dad wants to keep people away from us," he continued, hoping his story matched the life of this timeline in his mother's eyes. "So, she threatened the men that were stopping her from seeing me that she would 'pepper spray their asses off,' and I heard her yell at them."

Maria began to laugh along with Tony.

"So, I walked out, and she already had a can in her hands, so I humored her and let her speak, and she was right. I made an error. You know how I'm not good with names, so when she finished showing me the error I said: 'That's very observant of you, Miss Pepper,' and it stuck. The can wasn't even pepper spray; it was regular hair product." By the time Tony finished his story, Maria was laughing so hard she was holding her sides.

"She sounds feisty. I see why she caught your interest. Where is she now?"

The moment of humor ended, and Tony's eyes became downcast with his mother's recent question. "She's on vacation."

"When is she coming back?"

"I don't know if she will."

"Then it's not just a vacation. Did she move out of state?"

"You can say that."

"How come you haven't gone to visit her? You've been locked up here for almost a month straight, Anthony. Thirty days without human contact cannot be good for anyone. I'm sure she'd love to hear from you."

"I don't know about that."

Maria scoffed at her son's stubbornness. "What could you have possibly done to her that you're certain she won't forgive you?"

"It's hard to explain."

"Did you lie to her?"

"No."

"Did you cheat on her?"

"Never."

"Did you hit her?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Then, what?"

"I…I just realized I make her miserable, Mom. I didn't actively try to hurt her, but I did."

"Well, you're not giving me much to go on to help you, but like I said before: if she loves you, she'll forgive you. Nobody's perfect, _cuore_."

"Maybe you're right." Tony conceded. "Maybe she'll see that I meant well, even if I went about it all wrong."

Maria gave her son a smile and a hug. "That's the Stark spirit! Pepper is lucky to have you; any woman would be." Tony hugged his mother back and held her in his embrace for a moment longer before returning his attention to the time. If he wanted to find Pepper in this timeline, he needed to do it fast.

"Well," Maria began. "I think I've smothered you too much today. I will go mind my own business and you should get out of here, now. Go!"

Tony nodded to his mother as he held both of her hands in his. "I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, Anthony," she kissed his forehead. Without another word, Maria stood up and disappeared behind the door of the living room, leaving behind a billionaire with a renewed spirit and goal of rescuing his Pepper Potts.

xxxXXXxxx

James Rhodes looked exactly as he had done when he had shot his basement's glass wall to get to him, minus the pissed off look on his face. It was moments like these that Tony appreciated the friend he had in the colonel, who despite the questionable mental health of the billionaire, had always stuck by his side. Finding him had not been an issue as his phone number had been saved on Tony's current cell phone, under the first position of his speed dial.

"I was wondering when you were gonna call me, you asshole. I haven't heard from you in weeks!" Rhodey reproached his friend as they sat in a small bar in New York City. "Your mom kept asking me what was wrong with you, and I was about to run out of excuses. Next time I'll let Happy come up with the bullshit ideas, and you know he ain't very good at them."

"Sorry," Tony flinched but chuckled. "I was sorting out some stuff."

"Are you done now?" Rhodey took a sip of his beer.

"Yup. I need your help, though."

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

Tony shrugged. "'Cuz you're a fuckin' mind reader, that's why."

"So, what do you want?"

Tony stared to his left and right, leaned over the table and whispered to the military man. "I need to find Pepper."

Rhodey narrowed his eyes at him before he extended his left arm to the edge of the counter, grabbed the condiment bottle from the rack, and placed it in front of Tony's side of the table. Tony grabbed the bottle without thinking, and after he realized what Rhodey had done, he scoffed.

"Really, Rhodey? What? Is she mad at me or something? Did she ask you not to tell me where she is?"

"Who is mad at you? What are you talking about?"

"Pepper!"

"You HAVE _pep-per _in your hand!"

"This is not funny, Rhodey! Where is she?"

Rhodey sighed. "Is Pepper your new nickname for Maya?"

"Maya?"

"Yes, Maya! Maya Hansen, your current girlfriend...if you can call her that, seeing as how old your ass is. The woman that you have been seeing on and off for the past six years, Maya."

Tony silently stared at Rhodey for a minute, but when his friend did nothing more than continue sipping on his beer, Tony's forehead hit the table, hard. "Shit."

"Tony, what the hell? Are you OK?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?" Tony mumbled as he picked up his head and took out his cell phone.

"Tony?"

"Just, give me a moment," the billionaire interjected as he pulled up a web search engine. He typed in Pepper's given name, and after a second, the report spat back 1,098,456 results. "Just my luck."

"Just your luck, what? You're not making any sense, Tony."

"What else is new?" He admitted. "You know what, I gotta go. I'll call you later, OK?"

"What? We just got here!"

"Yeah, uhm, here. Have fun, buddy!" Tony threw a wad of cash on the table, patted Rhodey's back, and left the establishment without even looking back. Rhodey shook his head in blatant disapproval of Tony's random actions, but used the cash to buy himself another round.

"Maybe he meant 'salt'?" The colonel wondered as he stared at the rejected bottle of pepper on the table.

xxxXXXxxx

Tony ran inside SI after realizing his virtual butler did not exist in this timeline, and missing every second of it. Some of the people walking the premises gave Tony a respectful nod or smile, but he returned neither as his feet took him to the receptionist up front. The brunette became nervous when she saw who had just walked inside, and her head snapped left and right looking for the hidden camera she knew just had to be around.

"Hi, uhm, you…what's your name?"

"L-Linda."

"Linda, OK, look, do you know who I am?"

The young woman nodded to him, eyes wide.

"Perfect, that's a start." He scratched back of his head "I need you to look for someone for me. She works here, probably in the accounting department, can you do that?"

Linda nodded again.

"Alright. Her name is Virginia Potts. P-o-t-t-s."

The woman wasted no time in pulling up the employee database. She quickly typed Pepper's name on the keyboard, but after a few tries, she shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Stark. There's no one with that name in the employee roster."

"That can't be. Try Pepper Potts."

"As in…?"

"YES! As in the condiment!"

"Alright," the woman swallowed hard but did as she was told. When she shook her head again, Tony slammed his hand on the counter, causing the woman to nearly jump out of her skin.

"Sorry! I'm not mad at you," Tony clarified when he saw Linda's eyes fill with unshed tears of nervousness. "Try, uhm…Virginia Hogan."

The result was again the same.

"Dammit," Tony mumbled, his forehead hitting the counter. "OK, so…can you check the archives? See if she worked here before but not anymore?"

"Yes, Mr. Stark. Do you want me to try all three names?"

"Yes, please." Tony responded, anxiously staring at Linda as she worked. Five minutes later, the look of sadness on the receptionist face told him what he needed to know. Tony hung his head, exhaled and then looked up once more. "Where's the nearest open computer lab?"

"There's a visitors' business center around the corner."

"Thank you, Linda!" Tony said, already halfway toward the center by the time the receptionist finished her sentence. As told, there was a small room with a few computers and other business equipment near the elevator around the corner. Tony ran to the computer on the farthest corner of the room and brought the computer out of standby mode. Once the credentials screen popped up, Tony prayed his codes still worked, and when they did, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He ignored the looks of the bystanders as he randomly cussed when his search for Pepper's current location proved unsuccessful. There were more Virginia Potts in this timeline than he had thought possible. As he went down the list, he began calling them via his cell phone, but none so far were his beloved one. He then began narrowing his search by location and her profession, but nothing came around.

_Come on, Pep. Where are you?_

Two hours later, Tony's search still had him empty-handed. He opened his cell phone and went through his contact list again just to make sure he had not missed her, but her name was nowhere to be found. The more he searched the more he begun to believe that Pepper did not exist in this jump.

_Was it something I said?_ He wondered as he tried recalling the events of his last jump. _What did I say? I said she didn't deserve to live the way she did. Was that…? DAMN! I didn't mean that she didn't deserve to live at all!_

Tony closed the internet browser window and logged off the computer. He could tell the employees were getting ready to go home by now, seeing as the night had already set. He remained in his chair for another hour, lost in his thoughts, until a slim hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality. He stared at the hand first before looking up to see a familiar set of blue eyes staring back at him.

_Pepper?_ He was aghast.

The woman gave him a bright smile and sat in the chair next to him, and patted his knee. "Linda, at the front, told me you were around. I thought she was kidding but she was right."

"Linda? I asked her if she knew where you were, and she said no!"

"What?" The redhead scoffed. "That's ridiculous!"

"Mrs. Stark?" The woman's whose honesty was in question appeared by the door of the business center room. "Mr. Stark wants to know if you're ready to go."

Tony was taken aback and pointed a finger toward his chest. "_I'm_ Mr. Stark. I'm right here!"

Linda eyed Tony with an uncomfortable look. "I meant, Mr. Stark Sr." She clarified.

"My Dad?" Tony asked, suddenly remembering his dad was alive in this continuity, too. As if on cue, the image of an older Howard Stark appeared behind Linda, a smile plastered on his face. "Hey, Gina! There you are!"

"Gina?" Tony mumbled, staring at his PA up and down as she stood up and ran to Howard before she hugged him, tiptoed and pressed her lips on his.

"Are we going home now?" Gina asked. "I'm so ready to leave."

At some point during the blatant PDA between Mr. and Mrs. Stark, Linda had excused herself and had left. Tony rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, but the image of Pepper practically making out with his father did not dissipate.

"Hey, Tony. What brings you here? Is your mom alright?"

"I…I gotta go," he answered as he got up from the chair, sped past them, and did not stop his fast pace out of the building despite his father's calls. Later on, after a more centralized web search, Tony found out that Regina "Gina" Stark was the new wife of Howard Stark, and that Maria and Howard had divorced three years ago when Howard had fallen in love with his PA. Needless to say, Tony was more than ready to jump timelines when he finally did.

* * *

**A/N:** Surprised? Want more? Let me know!


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Tony had woken up to his latest jump five minutes ago, but he refused to open his eyes just yet. He was not sure if it was because he was very comfortable in whosoever bed he was in, or if it was because he was afraid of what he would see if he did. After much thinking and courage mustering, he opened one eye and then other and the first image his eyes caught was one of something he was not expecting to see.

Before him on the nightstand he now recognized as his – and he gave thanks he was in his home – was a picture he already loved. It featured five people, and he knew all of them, even if one of them he did not like very much. The picture was of him, Pepper, Rhodey, Happy and Frederick. All four of the men wore black tuxedos, and Pepper wore a white, wedding dress. The poor billionaire could not contain the excitement that hit him first.

_Yes, finally! No, wait, ugh! With my luck, she probably married Frederick instead of me. I knew I should've beaten his ass when I had the chance!_

Tony's plans for killing Frederick and make it look like an accident dissipated when a hand circled around his chest in the same playful way Pepper sometimes did. Without thinking he grabbed it and took it to his lips, kissing it lightly starting at the fingertips, and when he reached the back of it, he almost chocked on a hair.

_Whoa, Pep. Are you against shaving in this timeline?_

Tony felt said hand reached down to his crotch, and when its grip was tightened around his happy little Tony, he realized he was naked under the covers. "Good morning, Hun," a seductive voice said in his ear, and it took the genius a total of three seconds to realize the voice he had just heard was coming from a person that was neither likeable nor _female_.

"THE FUCK!?" Tony jumped out of the bed and ran toward the glass wall, pressing his back against it. The blankets had gained some serious air with his sudden acrobatic move and were just now coming down, and once they hit the mattress once more, Tony's eyes widened almost out of their sockets when he saw Frederick, who was also very naked under the covers, wink his eye at him.

"Baby, why are you so shy all of a sudden? You surely weren't shy last night." Frederick gave Tony a sly smile. "You fox," he purred.

_No, no, no, no, no, no, no!_ Tony closed his eyes and recapped the previous jump, hyperventilating as he did, his nails scratching the glass wall behind him. His eyes then snapped opened when he recalled the moment during the last timeline that had triggered the current one.

"_She's beautiful, Mom. You would've loved her…" Tony said with a twinkle in his eyes but then caught his mistake. "I mean, if I hadn't screwed up so badly that I won't see her ever again and you'd gotten to meet her, you would have liked her very much."_

_ "I'm sure I _will_, _when_ I get her to meet her. And, I'm sure your father will be thrilled, too. You know, he was starting to think you did not like women after all; seeing as you're almost 40 and haven't settled down yet..."_

_ "What? Do you know how many woman I've been with?" Tony spat but then closed his lips when he remembered it was his mother he was talking to. "I mean…I, uhm…"_

"FUCK ME NOW!" Tony said without realizing his poor choice of words had been spoken aloud and not just in his almost exploding head.

"My pleasure!" Frederick responded and launched himself at Tony.

xxxXXXxxx

An hour later, the living room in the Stark mansion was filled with the loud sobs of a pained Frederick sitting on the couch. Pepper Potts was standing near him, holding a bag of ice to Richardson's swollen shut left eye, courtesy of his new husband who appeared to have gone mad. The woman patted Frederick's back to comfort the wailing man, who was in tears after Tony had not only rejected to sleep with him, but had punched him in the face to stop him from getting near him.

"It's alright, Freddie," Pepper massaged Fredericks shoulders. "I'm sure Tony has a perfectly good explanation for this, _right_?" The strawberry-blonde narrowed her eyes at the attacker, and Tony swallowed hard.

"I…" Tony began, scratching the back of his head before shrugging. "I don't know what happened to me. I…I got the stage fright."

"Stage fright?" Pepper asked between gritted teeth and a fake smile. "Stage_ fright_?" Tony could see on her face that she was silently telling him that it was not a good explanation at all for his behavior, and her eyes demanded he immediately came up with a better one on the spot, but Tony was at a complete loss.

"Hey, I'm here!"

The voice of the newcomer approaching them from the entrance of the home caught everyone by surprise. Rhodey's head snapped back and he flinched when he saw Frederick blowing his nose loudly on a tissue. Pepper shook her head at Rhodey as he neared her. He then stared down at Frederick and then at Tony before shaking his head. "So…what do you need from me, babe?"

_Babe_, Tony thought, his eyes glued to Rhodey as he pressed his lips on Pepper's while he pinched her butt in a manner he thought no one could see. The colonel should have known better to pull such a stunt under the watchful eyes of the inventor; Tony Stark knew every trick in the book that a man could use to discretely – and, not so discreetly – indulge on a willing woman's body in public.

"Jimmy, can you hold this for me while Tony and I have a talk in the kitchen?" Pepper handed the bag of ice to her husband.

"Sure."

"Thank you, Honey. You're the best."

After transferring the only thing that was keeping Frederick's eye from further swelling, Pepper snapped her fingers at Tony and pointed her chin in the general direction of the kitchen. Tony followed her lead immediately but wanted nothing more than to run away from his home and jump off the edge of the dropdown. As soon as they both arrived to the kitchen, Pepper closed the door behind them and stared directly at Tony's face with so much anger in her eyes that the billionaire thought she could probably disintegrate him on the spot.

"_What_ were you thinking?" Pepper began, yelling as high as her low voice allowed.

"I…" Tony gulped. "I wasn't?"

"No shit, you weren't! I didn't introduce you to my Freddie so that you could beat him up!"

Tony raised his hands in defense. His mind was yelling at him to stop the senseless argument he knew was probably not even going to matter tomorrow, but his heart told him to take advantage of every second his departed Pepper was alive. "I've never done this before, alright? I don't know what took over me," he lied.

Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose with her right index finger and thumb, took a deep breath, and shook her head. "Is this because of Happy? Are you not over him yet? Because it's kinda late to backtrack, Tony. You just got married!"

"Happy?"

"Ugh! Don't play innocent with me, Anthony Stark! I saw how you were ogling him during the wedding. I'm surprised poor Frederick didn't notice. I just knew you two got married too fast!"

As soon as the accusation left Pepper's lips, she was confused by Tony's actions when he began laughing aloud. She had never seen him hoot like this before. He could hardly keep himself standing and had to resort to holding his weight against the kitchen counter. His legs almost gave under him, and after a minute of nonstop cackling, he had tears coming down his eyes. With every new fit of laughter, Pepper grew more and more concerned, her eyes looking all around them to try and find out what Tony was finding so amusing.

"Tony, why are you…? What's so funny?"

Instead of responding, Tony let out a new bout of laughter, which only caused Pepper's confusion to turn into anger. She walked up to him, ready to strangle the living crap out of him when the door to the kitchen slammed opened.

"Pepper, Tony! What gives? Why are you laughing?"

"I am NOT the one laughing!" Pepper pointed to Tony, who by now was rolling on the floor. "HE is!"

"Why is he laughing?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, get him to stop!"

"HOW?"

"I don't know, but just do it! Frederick thinks that you both are laughing at him and I can hardly keep him from leaving and jumping off a cliff!"

"He'd do that for me? That'd save me the trouble," Tony said as his laughter died down, but when he realized he had again said the wrong thing aloud, his laughter immediately stopped. "I mean, no! Uhm, let me just talk to Pepper, OK? We'll sort this out and then we'll go out there and I'll talk to Frederick, alright?"

"Fine, but do it quick. I'm running out of things to tell the man!" Rhodey spat as he slammed the door behind him.

Tony wiped the tears off his face; a few light chuckles still escaped him as he did so, and stood up from the floor. "I'm sorry, Pep. I just…" he sighed. "You know what, nevermind. It's too long of a story to tell."

Pepper crossed her arms over his chest. She had never seen Tony act so odd, and she was sure as hell she did not like it one bit. "What is your problem? Do you want to get divorced already?"

At the sound of the d-word coming from Pepper, the moment of hysteric irony that had engulfed him went away, leaving him cold as he remembered experiencing a divorce with Pepper only a week ago from his perspective. "No, Pepper. I'd never want to divorce anyone. It's a terrible thing to do."

"Well, that's what you're probably going to get if you keep this, whatever it is you're doing, up. And, stage fright? Really? What does that even mean?"

"Uhm, well, you see, the thing is…" Tony bit his lip. He was not even sure why he had said that in the first place. "It's complicated…"

Pepper narrowed her eyes at him again for the nth time, looked him up and down as if scanning him with an invisible lie detector, and then her eyes widened in sudden enlightenment. "Oh…_ooooh_! I-I think I know what you mean, Tony! Well, this is ridiculous!"

"You do?" Tony scrunched his face, wondering how Pepper could understand what he was trying to say if he truly was not attempting to make any sense at all. "What do you think I mean?"

Pepper snickered, pointing a finger at him. "You're clever, Tony. Very clever. It all makes sense now! You should've just been honest with me and Freddie in the first place; _especially_, with Freddie."

"OK, now _I_ don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, don't be shy, Tony. I totally understand! Rhodey has the same problem from time to time."

Tony furrowed his brows. "What problem?"

"Well, you know. Stage fright."

"OK."

Pepper rolled her eyes. "You know, that's a very good code for it: stage fright. You should patent it."

"Patent, what?"

"It'd sound great in commercials."

"Commercials? What the hell are you talking about, Potts?"

"I can already picture it," the woman walked closer to Tony and placed a hand on his shoulder, while the other pointed to something only she could see. "Do you suffer from stage fright? You are not alone! Tony Stark suffers from performance issues, too."

"P-p-performance _issues_?"

"Yes! You know? You have performance issues on the stage: stage fright! Dammit, Tony. You should've just led with that. You know damn well that Frederick is a doctor; he'll find you a pill for that and you two will be back to doing it in no time!"

"Wait? You think I can't get it up?"

"It's OK, Tony." She hugged him, all the anger she had been harboring toward his unusual act completely gone. "Performance issues are not uncommon; one out of five –"

"I DON'T HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES!"

"It's OK, Tony. It's perfectly normal…at…your age…"

"My age? Ugh, this just sucks…"

"No, it doesn't. You should've just told me, Tony. You know I'd help you. In fact," she pulled away from him and began patting her herself as she looked for her phone. "Let me get a hold of a friend of Freddie. He can issue you a prescription over e-mail and I can go pick it up right now."

"NO! Pepper! Stop that!"

"Will you stop being so stubborn? I'm just trying to help my friends. You mean a lot to me, Tony, and so does Freddie. I just want you guys to be happy."

_So do I_, Tony sighed at the irony. "But, Pepper…I don't…"

"Don't wanna hear it." She sing-songed. "I'm going to help you whether you want it or not. But, that doesn't mean you're off the hook, Stark. You better go apologize to Frederick before he kills himself. You're lucky if he doesn't press charges. You could go to jail for that."

_I'd rather go to jail_, Tony thought. Deep inside, however, he was grateful that he had at least had a chance to see Pepper alive and well, and while she was off limits in this timeline as she had been since he began time traveling, that did not mean he could not bask in her presence. He looked down at his bracelet and noticed the charge of it was down to the 30's. He was running out of time himself.

The genius busied himself observing her as she spoke on the phone. He knew she was wasting her time and effort, but he did not care. When the 24-hour mark hit again he would be gone, jumping toward another outlandish timeline where he would probably wake up a priest in Tibet, or as the personal sex toy of Obadiah Stane. As he finished his self-pondering, Pepper shut her phone and looked up at him.

"It's all set. Greg is sending an online fax to the pharmacy right now. I'm going to go pick it up for you."

Tony opened his mouth to protest, but a better idea came to him. "OK, Pep, you win. I'll take the damn pills but, can I go with you to pick them up? I think I should probably give Frederick some space."

Pepper considered the suggestion for a moment before she shrugged in acceptance. "I guess. But only if you go make up with him; otherwise, there's no deal."

"Sure…of course…make up…I'll meet you outside?"

"Alright," Pepper said as she walked to the kitchen door and left. Tony took a deep breath, dreading about what qualified as making up with his _spouse_. He just hoped making up did not mean making out. Shuddering at the thought, Tony rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck in preparation before he too walked out of the kitchen and into the living room to face the music again.

xxxXXXxxx

_Maybe I can hit my head really hard on my way out of this continuity and forget this timeline altogether_, Tony mused as he walked out of the house after having to pry a very eager Frederick off him. As he had feared, the making up had turned into an awkward making out session; one that he would not forget any time soon even though it had been shorter than the time it took him to punch Frederick's lights out in the morning. _The things I do for Pepper._

Sadly, she would never know of them_. And maybe it's best that she doesn't know about this one._

His eyes looked up to see Pepper sitting on the hood of her car. Rhodey was standing in front of her, feet planted firmly on the ground. Pepper's legs surrounded Rhodey's waist, and their hands caressed each other in a way Tony wanted to hope he and Pepper could do again. They were so entranced in their lip locking they did not hear Tony walk up to them until he cleared his throat.

As the couple separated themselves from each other, a promise of more to come was clear in their eyes. Tony had to wonder if he and Pepper looked the same way to a random bystander whenever they were together: happy, committed and deeply in love. He was surprised how well he was taking seeing his Pepper sharing an intimate moment with his best friend, but he also figured that if anyone would be the prime candidate on his trust list to watch over her if he were to die, it would have been Rhodey all along.

"Are you ready? Did you guys patch things up?" Pepper asked as she slid down from the hood with Rhodey's help. Tony nodded to her and walked to the passenger's seat. Rhodey gave Pepper one last kiss before he turned around and headed back to the home. "You're doing the right thing, Tony. I'm sure Freddie will soon forget all about this."

Tony smirked at how prophetic her words really were. "I'm sure he will."

The two of them jumped in the car and drove out of the mansion, heading straight to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription that Tony knew he not only did not need, but that he would not even get to use at all. As they drove in silence on the PCH, Tony grabbed Pepper's hand in his and gave it a light squeeze. She returned the gesture and enhanced it with one of her smiles. In that moment, Tony forgot all about his worries, his pain, and his mission, and for the first time since he had pressed the button on his bracelet in his basement, everything in the world –his world, was alright.

* * *

**A/N:** Something lighter for you guys; hope you liked it. Although, you know what happens after the characters relax…


	9. Chapter 8

**A/N: **I had a different idea for this chapter, but a certain reviewer inadvertently gave me a better one. Won't say who until the end of the chapter so I don't spoil the fun. See why reviews are so awesome?

Erik'sTrueAngel: Nick Fury, huh? Why the hell didn't I think of that? Glad you all loved the last chapter :) It was a hoot to write. At the request of StarksViolet, I introduce to you more angst :P

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**Chapter 8**

The loud buzzing sound did not resemble anything he could immediately identify, so his first instinct was to ignore it altogether. However, a second unfamiliar sound followed the first, and now that he was paying more attention to his surroundings, he noticed a few uncommon developments around him. He opened his eyes and what welcomed him was a grey, concrete wall with random scribbles on it. He then sat up on the thin mattress he was on and stared over his shoulder to see he was in a very small room. A toilet sat in the corner, and a few books lay on the floor. When his eyes stared to the opposite wall, he saw there was actually none. Instead, metal bars were in its place.

_Oh, brother_, Tony thought as he realized where he was. He looked down to see the orange jumpsuit covering his body and he shook his head. _Careful what you wish for, indeed._

"Stark, get up. You have a visitor," the approaching guard said from outside as he pressed the appropriate code to unlock the bars. A hissing sound alerted both men that the deadbolt had been removed. Tony stood up from the concrete bed and did as told, silently awaiting the reveal of his situation in this timeline. The guard grabbed Tony's arms and cuffed them behind his back before pushing him to start walking ahead of him.

The prison cell he had been in was emptier than the ones he was walking by, suggesting to him that he was either new here, or he was not allowed to same privileges the other inmates seemed to have. He could feel the eyes of everyone behind his back but he opted to mind his own business as he walked down the narrow hall. They rounded the corner and arrived at the stairs, and he took careful steps as he walked down. Once they reached the first floor, the security guard grabbed him by his arm and led him toward what seemed to be the administrative offices of the building. The bright light inside of them almost blinded the genius, but after a few blinks of his eyes his vision was restored.

The office was not without bustle, but it was one he would have expected from such a standardized place. Desks were strategically located all around the large office room, a dozen people scattered throughout it worked on their tasks. A couple of them looked up at him for only a second before their eyes returned to their computer monitors as if he had not even passed by them. Finally, after what felt like an eternity to him, the guard stopped dragging him when they reached a metal door.

"Wait right here," the guard told Tony as he knocked on the door. A second later the door opened to reveal an older man in a suit. The guard and the man exchanged a few words Tony did not care to pay attention to until he was shoved inside the room. The older man closed the door behind them and pointed toward the single table and two chairs in the middle of the confined steps. Tony eyed the man with distrust; he just did not recognize him at all.

"Please, Mr. Stark."

Tony slowly walked to the nearest chair and sat down as comfortably as he could with his hands still cuffed behind his back. The suited man, who Tony now assumed was his lawyer, sat in the chair opposite to him. He then took out from his briefcase a handful of yellow manila folders before he dropped his suitcase back on the floor. He opened the first folder and eyed the papers thoroughly before he sighed loudly and looked up to stare at the billionaire.

"They denied your appeal again, Mr. Stark."

Tony did not say anything back, which prompted the man to continue his explanation. "They are not buying the temporary insanity claim we've made. They refuse to hear the case again."

Tony was not sure how to respond, so he opted to look around himself to pretend he was being insane right now; something that seemed to come naturally to him. When the man realized Tony was not paying attention to a word that was being said, he slapped closed the folder and addressed the seemingly confused inventor. "Mr. Stark, are you even aware of what I just said?"

Tony spared the man a glance and tilted his head. He wanted to know what he was being incarcerated for even though knowing so would not change the fact that there was no helping Pepper in here. He still had the arc reactor in his chest, so he figured he had to have done something terrible for the fact that his money, power and his superhero status had not prevented him from ending up put away.

"Who are you?" Tony asked, using his confused face to get the information he needed from the man. The suited shark shook his head in annoyance before speaking once more.

"I'm starting to think that you _are_ insane, Mr. Stark. First, you claim that you'd built a time machine and that you had been traveling through time. Then, you attack the prosecutor in the middle of the trial –which, didn't help much, by the way – and now you're asking me who I am when we've been working together to get you out of here for almost four years. A temporary insanity claim is not aided by acting the part, Mr. Stark."

"So, you're my attorney?" Tony asked, purposefully ignoring the reference to the _88MPH_ as to not raise any suspicions. "Not a very good one, I presume, since I'm still locked up."

The lawyer scoffed. "You're lucky locked up is all you've got, sir. With your list of charges, they could've given you the death penalty, TWICE, even if you're Iron Man."

"What-what are the charges again?"

The lawyer sighed loudly as he stood up. He took out a small key from his pocket and walked behind Tony. The tension being released from his wrists was the indication that his cuffs had been removed. The attorney kept the key and the cuffs with him as he walked toward the folders, picked them up from the table, and dropped them in front of Tony's side of the table.

"Suit yourself. Call me when you remember everything again. I'll be outside." Without another word, the shark walked to the door, knocked on it twice and stepped out when the guard on duty opened the door. The metal exit was again closed and locked, leaving Tony to stare down at the folders.

"Let's see what I did." He hated to admit it, but he was extremely curious.

Tony grabbed the first folder and went through the papers. He could not understand half of the lingo written on it, but he did understand the meaning of:_ life in prison without possibility of parole_. Whatever he had done had been atrocious enough to land a billionaire superhero in a cell.

The second folder, labeled _Evidence_, was more enlightening than the first. Inside of it he found a few pictures, mostly of parts of his suit in terrible condition and covered in blood. The pictures were accompanied with a brief description of the evidence exhibit, along with measurements and their cross-reference to the accompanying reports in the same folder.

_Am I here because I busted someone's ass in the suit? Psh! If it had been the bad guy beating a superhero's ass, he would've walked._

The third folder, labeled _Appeal_, was no different than the first, filled with endless, boring forms but no pictures. He tossed it to the side and concentrated on the next one, labeled as _Crime Scene_.

_This is it._

The first thing that he saw was a picture of the Stark mansion from the front side of it. Yellow police tape surrounded the entrance and a few officers appeared on the scene with flashlights and measuring tapes in their hands. A string of similar images followed the first, showing his home from different angles and different times of the day and some of the pictures included images of the police cars parked outside the home.

The next picture was of the actual entrance of the home where the glass door had been shattered to pieces, and a splash of blood marred the expensive marble tiles. Tony could not help but notice that there was an imprint of what seemed like the boot of his suit on the red stain on the floor along with random parts of his armor: broken plastic components, screws and the sort.

The next picture showed what appeared to be his living room in utter disarray: broken glass, flipped tables and chairs, more blood covering the furniture and other surfaces, and every single part of the room labeled with numbers, chalk and other forensics procedure indicators all around. Even the area around his fireplace was yellow-tapped, and some of the consequent pictures showed the police officers trying to pry something from the burning flames.

He cast the picture aside and went to the fourth one. He squinted his eyes as he tried to determine what he was looking at until he finally realized it was a shot of the stairs leading to his basement lab. On every single step depicted in the image there was a smudge of blood with imprints of hands and feet smearing the redness all over the red trail, and while the picture was not very clear, he could already tell the imprints did not belong to his suit, but a very petite person. The glass door at the bottom of the staircase appeared to be shattered as well, and he could see the edge of either Dum-E or U's claw coming out of the basement room.

It was not until his eyes landed on the next picture that the scattered pieces of the puzzle began making sense to him. And while it took him a moment to see the big picture being painted here, when the realization hit, it did so with a much harder impact than finding Pepper dead in his bed.

_Oh, no…I…I couldn't have. Please, no!_

Unfortunately for him, he could have and he had.

In the picture he now held tightly in his hands was the proof, _undeniable_, that even if he miraculously found a way out of the prison he was being held captive, it would have not made a damn of a difference in his cause. There was absolutely nothing Tony needed to do for Pepper here, as it was evident in his hands that he had already done enough.

He held the picture in one trembling hand before he grabbed all of them and scattered them all over the table in one swift move. His eyes became overwhelmed with the amount of evidence against him, and had the victim been someone he did not give a fuck about, he would have almost admired the command of his suit. However, the powers that be did not make it so simple for him, and his eyes began welling up with tears as they landed from one image to the next; all containing the face of the same woman; his woman.

His _pregnant_ woman. His pregnant _wife_.

Her face was almost unrecognizable under the swelling and blood covering every inch of her features, but he would have identified her anywhere, nonetheless; it was simply a gift of his. Her titian tresses were uneven, apparently having been pulled out of their pores by a rough hand, and some had been mercilessly chopped off with a pair of dull scissors. Several teeth were missing, and so were some of her fingernails and, unfortunately, so were some of her limbs; he had apparently chopped them off while she was still alive and had thrown them in their fiery chimney.

Tony did not want to picture the circumstances that a person had to endure during such a violent attack, and now more than ever was he grateful that the memories of what his life had been in a new jump up to the point he had landed in a certain reality did not suddenly fill his mind. He was certain that the images of doing this unscrupulous act upon anyone with his bare –or armored, hands was something he did not want to remember ever again. Especially, if the victim of whatever blind rage had engulfed him during these actions had been none other than the woman he was trying to save.

_Pepper…how could I have…no…this is not me…I'd never hurt you!_

His shaking hands dug under the pile of grotesque images and pulled out the forensic report. It looked no different than the one he had held in his hands a few days ago, mocking him with a coroner's final assessment of Pepper's cause of death. This time, however, the report was even lengthier than before, more in-detail, and utterly graphic in nature.

As he read through it, he became even more disgusted with himself. Pepper had been six months pregnant with their first child, and he had just up and beaten her to death for no apparent reason. The prosecutors had called it premeditated murder since Tony had put on his armor to kill her and had chased her around the house until she was dead and in pieces. Had his lawyer not been as good as he was turning out to be, Tony was sure he would have self-incriminated and self-sentenced himself to death by the most hideous way he could come up with.

It seemed he had gotten his wish to end up in prison, although he did not recall requesting the reason to be here was that he had killed his wife and unborn child. He groaned as he wiped his hand over the table and sent all the pictures, folders and documents onto the floor. He kicked the chair and table, but neither the guard nor the lawyer dared to walk inside while Tony was having a fit. It was always this way when he forgot who he was and everyone who had been present when Tony lost his mind was used to it.

When his attorney finally returned inside the room after Tony had his fill of rage, one look towards his client told the old man that Tony now knew what he had done; and, just as all the other times after Tony had suddenly remembered why he was in prison, the genius asked his lawyer to drop the case. Whatever justice he had been sentenced to he had coming, and he knew it.

xxxXXXxxx

_This timeline is different from the rest_, Tony pondered to himself in his prison cell. His attorney had mentioned the time machine, and now that he had put away his anger and abhorrence with himself at finding out he had pounded Pepper to death with his Iron Man suit, his mind was analyzing all his jumps. It had been difficult to do so until now since there always seem to be a crisis to face, but now in the dead of the dark he was left alone with his thoughts.

The faint glow of the _88MPH _showed its charge was at 23%. The power supply was almost depleted, and Tony had nothing to show for his time hopping other than shame and disgrace. He could not understand why or how his lawyer knew about the time machine, or why the Tony Stark of this timeline would have a need for it.

Was he jumping more than he thought he was? Was there another Tony Stark out there also seeking to mend the errors of his past? Nothing was making sense to him; he just knew he would never lay a hand on Pepper, even when drunk or pissed off, or both at the same time. Had Pepper said something to him? Had she done something?

There was nothing Tony could think of that Pepper would act upon for him to even justify or commit the crime he had perpetrated, but the evidence against him was plentiful. He rested his back against the cold wall and closed his eyes, methodically listing the details of every jump. Maybe the time machine did not work in the way he had expected or had intended to. Maybe he was supposed to go through every jump as he had so far, only to end up back where he had started with a resolution of letting things be the way they were. Maybe his calculations had been way off, and the time machine was nothing more than a glorified version of the events that Ebenezer Scrooge had gone through to learn the value of life and the need for compassion.

_But Scrooge had not lost the love of his life by his own hand._

Tony just could not understand the point of this. He knew he had rushed to using the prototype he was not even sure would work, but did it justify him suffering day after day for actions he did not remember causing? He could take on marrying the sick bastard that had been Pepper's boyfriend despite the change in sexual orientation it implied, or even seeing his late father dig his tongue in the strawberry-blonde's throat, but this reality he could not cope with.

_I'd first cut off my own limbs before hurting her_, he thought bitterly. Was this the lesson he was supposed to learn this time? That his ingenuity could turn into insanity at a drop of a hat? He did not want to believe it, but it was difficult not to believe it after seeing the pictures of his good work. That night Tony went to sleep with the faint feeling that it was all for naught, and that by the time he went back to his own timeline –if ever could do so, he was going to be left with no choice but to accept that Pepper was gone.

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**A/N:** You have Barefoot Beach Bum to thank for this plotline :)


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

The bright light shining above him woke him up. He moved his head to the left, then to the right, and all he saw were faces around him that he did not recognize. There was a steady beep near him he could hardly hear, but it was annoying enough to make him groan. One of the unknown faces perked up at his moaning, and her eyebrows shot up to the ceiling when she realized he was awake.

"He's conscious! Amp up the anesthesia; we're not done yet!"

_Anesthesia?_

Before Tony could utter another word, he felt his eyelids fall again and his world turned black once more.

xxxXXXxxx

_"Tony? Tony, can you hear me?"_

_Pepper, is that you?_ The billionaire tried to open his eyes, but his lids were heavier than he had ever felt them before. He tried again and this time he was slightly more successful. As his eyes focused on his strawberry-blonde girl, the will to keep his eyes wide open grew until he was able to keep the lids up where they belonged. He smiled at her and she smiled back, her eyes red from too many hours of crying.

"Tony, I thought I'd lost you." She sniffled. "You have no idea how hard it was for me not knowing if you were going to make it back."

Tony opened his mouth to comfort her, but even though his lips moved, no sound came out. He swallowed hard and licked his lips and tried again, but the result was the same. _What's wrong with me?_

He felt an itch inside his throat and he tried clearing it but the itch did not diminish in the least. He then tried coughing it out but it did not help either. Pepper noticed his distress and she stood up, walked up to the corner of the room and returned to his side with a glass of water in her hands. "It must be the anesthesia. Here," she pressed the edge of the cup to his mouth and he gladly took it.

The cold liquid did refresh his mouth and throat, but when he tried to speak, the inability to do so was still there. His eyes looked up to stare at hers, the doubt and fear evident in her blue orbs. Pepper put away the glass of water on the table next to her before she stood up and sat on the edge of the bed with him.

"Tony, there's something I have to tell you, and it's not going to be easy, but you need to know sooner rather than later."

The look on her face was not comforting at all, and he tried to sit up in bed but his muscles were not responding as well as he wanted them to. Pepper noticed the effort he was trying to make, so she pressed her palm on his chest and shook her head. "Don't move. There's no point."

_No point?_

"Look, Tony. I'm just going to say it, alright? Please listen to me." She inhaled deeply as if to gain courage herself and continued to speak. "A week ago you went out on a mission to Jazan in Saudi Arabia. Jarvis said you found more SI weapons in there, and that you told him not to tell me anything about it unless something _bad_ happened to you."

_Bad? Jazan? Mission?_ Tony closed his eyes for a moment, memories of the mission Pepper was referring to returning to him.

"_I've plotted the flight plan for the mission, sir. We should be arriving in approximately one hour, weather permitting," Jarvis told Tony, still monitoring his vitals and charting the path on the screen of the helmet._

_"An hour? God! I need to make this thing fly faster!" Tony responded, still feeling the physical impact of the mission he had just finished half an hour ago. Jarvis had intercepted a communication of the military, letting him know that a group of rebels in Chile had threatened to use weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population, in hopes of overturning the outcome of the latest election. Tony was not really fond of political struggles, but the weapons the rebels had threatened to attack with had his name all over them._

How many deals did Stane run under the table?_ Tony asked himself, growing tired of having his weapons being used for everything except the protection of the helpless._

"_Should I add enhanced flight time to the list of improvements for the design plan of the Mark VII?"_

"_Yes, do that. And, run by me again where we're going?"_

"_Jazan, Saudi Arabia. An abandoned stash of SI weapons was discovered by a group of thieves, and they have been using them to raid the surrounding small farming villages of their limited resources."_

_Tony sighed; he hated having to deal with bandits. Bandits were amateurs, out for anything of value and ready to kill for a few bucks. His weapons were highly sophisticated and deadly, and in the hands of unskilled thieves the already lethal artilleries posed an even greater threat to anyone who stumbled upon them._

_ "When do you think we'll be back home, Jarvis?"_

_ "Assuming flight time, time zone changes and actual battle times, the soonest time of arrival to Malibu will be close the midnight."_

_ "Shit! I promised Pepper I'd be there by 6 and wait for her!"_

_ "I'm afraid we cannot make it back by then, sir."_

_ "Does she know where I am?"_

_ "Per your request, I have not informed Miss Potts of your mission. Would you like me to cancel your meet up?"_

_ "No! Just, uh…if we're not done with the battle by the time she gets home, tell her to make herself comfortable, and that I'll be home as soon as I can."_

_ "I assume you do not wish me to tell her your whereabouts?"_

_ "Not yet, J. I don't want her worrying over my sorry ass if she doesn't have to."_

_ "As you wish. May I also say that we should make this mission as swift as possible, sir? The Mark VI has endured substantial damage and is in dire need of repairs."_

_ "Noted, Jarv. I'm just gonna blow up their stash and return home."_

_ "Indeed."_

Tony's eyes snapped open and became wide. He remembered the mission Pepper was talking about, which could only mean he was back to his own continuity – or one rather similar to it, but earlier in time. Pepper patted his chest again when he began hyperventilating, but her gentle touch did not help him calm down.

"Tony, breathe. If you start having another panic attack, the doctors are going to have to put you under again. Please, calm down."

_Another panic attack?!_ Tony closed his eyes and took in deep breaths; he was not sure what putting him under truly meant for him at the moment, so he had no choice but to listen to his former PA. Once Pepper noticed he was breathing normally again, she leaned closer to him and kissed him on the lips. Tony returned the gesture with as much emotion as he could as he did not know if he would ever get another chance to taste her like this.

When she finally pulled away, Tony tried to lift his right hand to touch her face, but the limb refused to move. _What the fuck?_

He then tried moving his left arm, but the result was the same. He looked up to stare at Pepper and noticed her eyes were filling with tears again. "They're gone, Tony. They had to cut them off."

_Cut _what_ off?_ He thought and wanted to scream his question aloud, but his voice betrayed him. For the first time since his eyes had opened up to see her face, he looked down at his body to witness the news Pepper was trying to relay to him: his arms were cut way above where his elbows should have been.

He pressed his head back on the pillow and began hyperventilating again, cursing his damned luck. Pepper was trying to keep a calm demeanor but it was difficult for her to see him like this, especially after last weekend was supposed to have been their second unofficial date for them. She did not believe she could ever forgive herself for indulging in a bubble bath at the mansion while Tony was being blown to pieces in Jazan. "Tony, please calm down. I just got you back and I don't want the doctors to knock you out again. I can't… please…"

Tony closed his eyes again and took in even deeper breaths. He then felt Pepper's hand on his cheek, and he leaned closer to her touch. They remained silent for a moment until Pepper spoke again. "Tony, there's more. It's not good either, but…your arms aren't the only thing they had to cut."

Tony bent his head to the side until his lips could feel her hand, and he kissed it lightly before nodding to her and opening his eyes again, telling her he was ready for the shocking news. Pepper nodded to him as well, and she stood up from the bed.

"I'll just show you, Tony." Her hand held the edge of the blanket and she slowly took it down. Tony looked down at his body, and after seeing that his body ended at his waist, he passed out in shock.

xxxXXXxxx

The weight on his chest woke him up, and for a moment the billionaire forgot about his time traveling journey and just concentrated on inhaling the scent of Pepper's shampoo. He remembered why he had passed out, but he was not sure how long it had been. The curtains of the only window in the hospital room he was in were closed, so he could not even guess the time. He closed his eyes again, knowing all he had to do was just waiting until the bracelet triggered another jump, but it was then his mind revealed to him a terrible fact.

He had no arms.

No arms meant no bracelet.

No bracelet meant no jump.

_Holy shit! Holy fucking shit!_

He hit the back of his head against the pillow in frustration, and the movement caused the sleeping Pepper on his chest to be stirred awake. She bent her head back just enough to stare up at him while still partially resting on his chest. "Tony, you're awake."

She pulled herself up from him and rubbed her left eye with her hand as she attempted to clear the drowsiness off her. She combed her long hair with her fingers and scratched her itchy throat. "Are you hungry?"

Tony tried to speak again but when only gagging sounds came out, he shook his head. Pepper's shoulders slumped at his efforts, and she decided to let the billionaire know the extent of his injuries. "Your vocal chords suffered major damage. You won't be able to speak again."

Tony blinked several times and nodded to let her know he understood. He could have dealt with being mute for the rest of his life, so adding insult to injury at this point did not shock him as much as he thought it would. The true problem, however, was finding out what had happened to the _88MPH._ "Do you remember what happened to you?" She asked him with a soft voice. When Tony shook his head, she nodded and inhaled deeply.

"Jarvis told me you were ambushed by the guys who had your weapons. Rhodey suited up and went looking for you when we found out what had happened to you. He said you were…very badly injured. He took you to the closest hospital but there wasn't much they could do for your limbs, so they had to cut them. The doctors are surprised you're even alive. You lost a kidney, a lung _and_ they had to take out your spleen."

Pepper closed her eyes and chocked back a sob. "I'm sorry, Tony. I'm really sorry. I tried to have them keep you whole, but they left me no option; they said it was either your limbs or your life. This is not what I wanted for you; but I wanted them to save you, even if what was left was just part of you. Please don't hate me. Please, please don't hate me."

Tony shook his head.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this, though. The doctors, they said that you can leave in a couple of weeks but, then what? What do you want me to do?"

Struggling as he did so, the billionaire shrugged; he too did not know what to do. And, worst of all, he had no way to communicate with Pepper or anyone. He was a mute stump. If only he had not gone off to that mission. If only Obadiah had not been double-dealing under the table. If only he had not been locked out from monitoring the approval and shipment of his weapons around the world.

_If only I had never been Iron Man, _that was the determining factor that Tony narrowed it to. Iron Man had been his ticket out of Afghanistan, but it had also hurt those around him. He had killed Pepper with his suit. He had poisoned her with the reactor. He had endangered hundreds of people at his Expo when Justin Hammer had gotten ahold of an Iron Man suit specs. It did not matter how he saw it, both the joy and misery in his and her life revolved around his fucking suits.

_Pepper had been right to tell me to stop_, he remembered bitterly how his then-PA had gone as far as quitting her job, telling him she did not want to be part of his self-destruction. Damn the woman for not being wrong! Then again, what did he expect from her? Her sound mind had been one of the reasons he had hired her as his personal assistant. She had been standing by his side every time he had acted a fool, cleaning up his messes and dealing with the press herself. And, how had he repaid her for her loyalty? He had killed her in more ways than one in the past week while executing his stupid idea that he had the power to right the wrong he had caused in her life.

"Rhodey will be here later on. He said Jarvis called him and told him he had an idea of how to help you communicate with us. I don't know what it is, but knowing Jarvis, it will surely work."

Tony nodded to her, only partially hearing what she was saying. His main concern at the moment was locating the bracelet. What if it had fallen in the hands of someone else that did not know what it was? What if it took another person to the next jump and left them stuck somewhere in time? By his calculations, he estimated that the bracelet was nearly down to the tens by now, so it only had two more jumps left.

_Will the bracelet travel on its own?_

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. The door opened wide to let a nurse come inside the room, holding a brown paper bag in her hands. She walked up to Pepper and gave her an apologetic smile, obviously uncomfortable with the situation herself. "Miss Potts, I've been meaning to give you this but I keep forgetting. These are Mr. Stark's belongings that he had in his possession when he was admitted. I thought you may want them even though there aren't that many."

"Yes, thank you," Pepper took the bag from the woman. "Thank you very much," she added in a tone that was both grateful but also commanding for the nurse to understand she had been dismissed. The nurse nodded once to Pepper and then to Tony before she quickly made her way out of the room. Pepper turned her attention back to Tony, who was eyeing the bag with the same wonder she was. "What did you have with you, Tony?"

She opened the bag and dug her hand inside it and the first thing she took out was Tony's favorite watch. "Your Jaeger's here." She put the watch on the table next to his bed before her hand went inside again. When her hand came out, Tony's first thought was that nothing had been there, but when she opened her palm to stare at the velvet pouch in her hand, she frowned.

"What is this?"

Tony's eyes widened and his mouth went slack.

Pepper did not catch his reaction as she was busying herself with shaking the small pouch with her right hand until a piece of jewelry landed on her left palm. She eyed the contraption for a moment, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Why were you carrying your mom's engagement ring?"

As soon as the question was up in the air, Pepper let out a sharp gasp. Her head snapped up to stare at Tony, and one look at his face was all it took for her to understand the meaning of the ring in her hands. "Tony…were…were you … going to…?"

Tony swallowed hard and nodded, the seriousness of his features made Pepper intake a shallow breath. She closed her hand around the ring and bit her lip, staring deeply into Tony's brown eyes. "Tony… I… I can't believe… you'd…"

Tony nodded again. Pepper sniffled as she put the ring back into its protective pouch and then placed it on the same table the watch was. "We can talk about this later, alright?" His single nod was his only response.

"There's one more thing in here," Pepper said as she flipped over the bag and the last item inside of it fell onto her lap. Pepper was taken aback by it as she alternated between looking down at her lap and then at the watch on the table. "You carry two watches, Tony?"

Pepper noticed he was making an effort to look down so she rushed to pick up the foreign item. "I'm sorry. Here, what is this?" She asked as she dangled the 88MPH in her hand. "Is this yours or did the nurse bring it in by mistake?"

Tony nodded frantically.

"Oh, it's not yours," Pepper deduced and was about to put it back in the bag but Tony's wiggling caught her attention. "It IS yours?"

Tony nodded.

"Why do you have two watches?"

Tony cleared his throat and pointed to his chest with his chin. Pepper struggled for a minute as she tried to read Tony's gestures. "Is it for the reactor?"

Tony nodded. Pepper pulled the bracelet closer to her face. "Is it, like, a counter or something? It's at 11%."

If Tony could have launched himself at her, he would have. Nonetheless, all he could do was wiggle some more and point to his shoulder with his chin, hoping Pepper would understand what he was trying to make her understand.

"Do you need it right now?"

Another nod.

"But, Tony…where can I…you know…there's no…"

Tony again pointed to his left shoulder. Pepper held the bracelet by each end with both hands and stared at it. "Wait, if it's a timer, then shouldn't we get you another reactor? It's now at 10.5%."

Tony's heart was beating outside his chest. Once the bracelet hit 10%, his only chance to leave would be gone forever. Tony shook his head and again pointed to his shoulder.

"Alright! Alright! Calm down, Tony." The woman said as she became familiarized with the bracelet. "It's adjustable, at least. Let me try to put it on."

Tony held his breath as Pepper struggled to close the bracelet around the thinnest part of what was left of his arm, but the muscle around it was much thicker than his wrist would had been. She put the contraption on a few times but it kept opening up, causing Tony to groan in desperation.

"OK, don't move. I'm going to try one last time, and if it doesn't work, I'll have it resized, OK?"

Tony nodded, closed his eyes and prayed that her final attempt worked. Luckily for him, it did.

* * *

**A/N:** AND the final chapter is next. Props to Bella Cuore for finding the trigger for the situation of this chapter in the last chapter. Every chapter has a trigger. Can you find it in this one?


	11. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

The cold breeze woke him up, forcing him to curl toward himself more than he thought possible. When the frigid cold around him just got worse, Tony groaned and patted around him, searching for his blanket; however, he quickly realized there was none. He opened his eyes and was surprised to see that he was not even in a bed, or in a room, or a building at all.

He was on the ground out in the streets.

_Now what?_ He pondered as he pushed himself up from the pavement. He looked around himself and saw he was in the back of a dark alley, surrounded by cardboard boxes and newspapers. He stared down at himself and patted down his body, making sure all his body parts were in place. He then pulled back his left long sleeve and saw that the _88MPH_ was present, 9% of charge remaining in it.

_ Oh, shit._

He kicked the newspapers off him and slowly stood up. His clothes were deranged, dirty and old, and he could feel the long beard on his face even without touching it. He smelled of cheap vodka and beer, and his grumbling stomach told him it had been a while since the last time he had had a decent meal. He placed his right palm on his chest and felt the familiar metal under his clothes. The reactor was there, but his usual expensive clothes were not.

He began walking toward the front of the alley, following the dim lights of the streets. As he padded his way to the end of the darkness, he noted that other homeless people were sleeping around him, all of them trying to protect themselves from the snow that had begun falling. He knew the West coast had the proper climate to receive snow, but it was as rare as him attending a business meeting on time.

Once he reached the end of the alley and the rest of the area was visible, he noticed that he did not recognize the surroundings. He made a right and began walking aimlessly, hoping to come to a major highway or street where he could find someone and ask where he was. He was not sure what time it was, or what year he was in, but the streets were practically deserted. Wherever he had landed this time around, the place seemed pretty unkept –abandoned, even. The few windows and doors he encountered on his way to a more populated area were either shattered or boarded up.

_Well, this sucks._

Finally, after almost half an hour of walking, the genius reached a well-lit street. He was surprised, however, that no cars were around. He looked to his left and then to his right, and he doubted anything or anyone had passed by the location in many years. He took a wild guess and made a left, heading down the street at a jogging pace. He alternated between fast walking and a full-sprint until almost an hour later, he found the first indication of where the bracelet had taken him.

_What the hell am I doing in New York?_ He eyed the dilapidated remains of Time Square. For an instant, Tony's shoulder tensed and he wondered if any moment now he was going to be attacked by an angry mob of zombies, seeing as the sight before him resembled one of a movie he had once seen in the past. He hoped that if zombies did appear after all, they disposed of him quick, fast and in a hurry; the last thing he wanted was to suffer a slow death at the hands of cannibals.

When it was just him after nearly a minute, Tony visibly relaxed. Now that he had an idea of where he was, he decided to continue his run toward the one building he knew would have answers for him; if this was a future timeline, then he had probably built the Stark Tower that he had been thinking about during the planning of the Expo. As he ran toward his destination, he noticed that random lights illuminated the streets from time to time. At first he had thought they were helicopters, but they were too fast and virtually silent compared to the choppers he had been around in his life. Maybe, he wondered, he had landed far into the future, where flying cars and skateboards could be bought in a corner store.

Nearly an hour later, Tony found himself two blocks away from his New York headquarters building, but the only sign that told him it was his building was the known address. His name on the side of the building was gone, and the building had been repainted with a tacky gold color. He was aware that his Iron Man suit was red and gold, but he wanted to think that he at least had used enough amount of each color to not make him look like he was wearing a reject outfit of the Liberace club.

_Oh, boy._

He began walking down the street, his eyes fixated on the building in front of him. Had he been paying more attention to his surroundings, he would have noticed the group of soldiers that approached him from behind. He would have also avoided the hit to the back of the head, and would have also probably freaked out at seeing their deformed faces. Well, they were not really _deformed_, per se; just, _alien_.

xxxXXXxxx

_I'm gonna end up with a brain tumor if I keep getting hit in the head like this_, the inventor thought as he began regaining consciousness. His head wobbled from left to right but he did not lift it just yet. He felt he was being held by the arms and was down on his knees, bowing down and waiting for who-knew-what. All he could see around him were feet and an even tackier-looking green and gold marble tiled floor.

_I must be inside the tower._

"The prisoner is awake, my King," Tony heard a gruff voice say behind him, and he had a pretty good idea the man was not referring to Tony as being the King. Tony heard his neck snap when he was pulled back by the hair in a forced, rapid manner, and he knew he was lucky the sudden action had not just paralyzed him on the spot. "We found him wandering the streets after curfew."

_Curfew? Why the hell is there a curfew in New York?_

"What should we do with him?" The gruff-voiced man asked as he let go of Tony's head. The billionaire took the opportunity to look around, and the scene unfolding before him made absolutely no sense to him. Flanking him and behind him stood several men and…other beings he could not quite identify. They all wore similar uniforms, all in green and gold colors. The insignia they had on their chest did not resemble anything Tony could immediately describe, other than comparing it to a silhouette of a bull's horns.

He then moved his head to the front and saw three people, two of which he immediately recognized. In the middle of the room, sitting on a throne, was who he now assumed was the King. He had slick black hair that was combed back, and wore a black, gold and green leather outfit Tony knew was as uncomfortable as it looked. He held in his right hand a glowing stick, and in his left hand a small dagger twirled between his fingers.

To the King's left side stood a familiar redhead wearing a rather provocative outfit. He knew the woman had a fetish for black spandex, but something told Tony that she was not happy to wear the very little clothing she had on. _What is Agent Romanoff doing here?_

His eyes then moved to the King's right, where his favorite girl in the world stood, wearing a similar outfit as Natasha's, but hers was red rather than black. Pepper also did not seem thrilled about dressing up as a whore in front of so many men, but something told him the ensemble had not been her idea or choice. Either woman, however, had yet reacted to seeing him or had made a sound to indicate they were even aware of what was happening around them; he had to wonder if they even knew him in this timeline.

"You all know what the punishment for violating the curfew is, do you not?" The King finally spoke, catching the attention of the billionaire again. As Tony spared the man a glance, the reflection of light coming from above the throne made him look up. On the wall behind the man was a display of items Tony had not seen before, but for some reason he could tell they were of value to the King. The first item, the one directly above the top of the throne was a Viking-style helmet. Tony narrowed his eyes at it, and it was then he saw that the helmet was still attached to a bodiless head.

_Oh, my God!_

His eyes then moved to the left of the helmet and he saw another helmet with a human head inside. This helmet was blue and had a block letter "A" on the forehead. Next to it was another head, this one without a helmet, but a head nonetheless. To the right side of the Viking head were two more heads; one wide and green, and the other black and with an eye patch.

_Fury!?_

Tony's eyes then flew to the next row of trophies above the heads. Above Nick Fury's head was a gun. Above the large green head was half an arm with a large, green fist prominent on it. Above the Viking head was an arm holding a hammer. Above the fabric, blue helmet was a red, white and blue shield with a star emblem in the middle. And, above the next head were a bow and an arrow.

_When the fuck am I?"_

"Then again," the King spoke again, narrowing his eyes at Tony with a questioning look. "I think this mortal may not be what he seems."

Tony gulped as the King approached him and bent down to his level. He then grabbed Tony by the chin and gave him a devious smile before he whispered to him. "I know what you've been doing, Stark. I can see it."

The billionaire was in shock as the King's hand grabbed a hold of Tony's left arm. With a force that seemed superhuman to the genius, the King snatched the _88MPH _from his wrist before barking an order to his servants. "Take him to the dungeons. Prepare him to be added to my collection," the King pointed to the back wall. "He's the last piece I've been waiting for."

Despite his struggle and rather vocal demands to recover his bracelet, Tony Stark was dragged by his arms and taken away to the darkest and smallest metal room he had ever been in.

xxxXXXxxx

Tony sat on the cold, humid floor of the _dungeon_ and rested his back against the wall. There was only enough room for one person, as long as the person was sitting down since the ceiling of the constricted space was extremely low. He was not sure why the King called it a dungeon as it seemed more to the billionaire as being a rather small metal cage. Even though he was sitting down, his stretched legs barely fit inside, so he had resorted to taking off his shoes so that he would be more comfortable.

At least they had shaved his beard off, claiming the King had demanded his face was recognizable for his little shrine of victories, or whatever the fuck the servants had called the gory display on the wall.

_This is it. I'm done. It's over._

Tony exhaled loudly and closed his eyes. Just now when he had finally pieced together how the _88MPH_ worked, he did not have it with him anymore. He only had one more jump left, the time left on the last charge would be nearly gone by now, and it was clear to him that it was the demented King who was going to have the pleasure to use it, if he had not already destroyed it, that was. Tony covered his face with his hands –which he was glad he had gotten back – and groaned.

"Where am I? What kind of world is this?"

"A world without Iron Man," a soft voice said from outside the cage, making Tony's head snap up. His eyes set on her blue ones and remained glued to them as Pepper looked left and right before slowly unlocking the cell and opening the door. Tony was not sure what to think of her actions, almost fearing it was nothing more than a trap, but when the strawberry-blonde crawled inside the room with him and closed the door behind her, he knew there was something else at work.

"Pepper…wha—"

His question was quieted down by her lips on his, and despite the small space around them, their bodies quickly found a way to fit together. Pepper sat on his lap, her legs bent on the floor next to his hips, and Tony pulled her closer to him by surrounding her back with his arms. Pepper's hands held his neck in place, guiding his head to the side so that she could deepen the kiss. Tony responded to her immediately, the act so familiar it made him forget the conundrum he was currently facing. All that existed in the world for him at the moment was Pepper; and all he cared about right now was that she was alive.

The kiss lasted a long time, both of them stopping only for a brief second to catch enough air to keep going. After a while, Pepper finally –and reluctantly – pulled away from him, but only a few inches from his face, keeping the rest of her body where it was. "Tony, I thought you were dead. I thought I'd never see you again."

"Dead?" The billionaire was taken aback. "Me? Dead?"

"Yes! No one had heard from you in ages! Not after the Expo…not after I…" She bit her lip and looked down as if what she was about to say shamed her to no end. "Not after I made the worst mistake of my life."

"Mistake? Pepper, I don't you think you even know the definition of the word _mistake_."

Pepper chuckled lightly and looked up at him. She caressed her face in between her hands, and gave him a weak smile. "Oh, Tony. This is all my fault."

"What is? I don't even understand what's going on."

"Where have you been?" Pepper asked with a tone of incredulity in her voice. "Surely you know about Loki taking over the world."

"Who?"

Pepper shook her head and combed his long hair with her fingers. "What did they do to you? Did you lose your memory or something?"

"I…I guess. What's going on, again?"

Pepper took a moment to give him another long kiss; this time she alternated between kissing his lips, his face and his neck. Tony could feel his body reacting to her touch, but despite his desire to take her here and now, he forced himself to focus on the matter at hand. "Please, tell me. I have to know," he pleaded to her as he too kissed her face, her neck and her exposed shoulders.

Pepper moaned due to his explorations, and even though she and Natasha had been held like this for many, many nights by their King, not one of those "nights of passion" made her feel the way she felt right now. "Tony… please… stop… I can't…"

After placing one more kiss on her neck, the genius finally pulled back. He ran the back of his hand on her face, and she immediately closed her eyes and leaned closer to his contact. "What did he do to you, Pepper? What did he do to everyone?"

Pepper silently indulged in his touch for a little while longer before she finally opened her eyes again and spoke. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"Uhm…" he began, struggling to find the correct response. "I remember you yelling at me on a roof after the Expo blew up."

Pepper's eyes widened at his response, shaking her head in disbelief. "Are you joking? That was, like, eight years ago!"

"E-eight? EIGHT years ago?"

"YES!" Pepper sighed. "But, it figures. That was the night I made the mistake that caused this."

"Pepper, how the hell are you responsible for that weirdo taking over the world? Did you help him or something?"

Pepper shrugged. "I guess I did. Although, I didn't know it at the time."

"Pepper, please. Just tell me what happened."

Pepper exhaled and nodded. She knew that as soon as Loki found out what she was doing, her head was going to join the Avengers display; she definitely did not have much time left as the man seemed to have eyes everywhere. "Alright. That _weirdo's_ name is Loki. He's…a god, you can say. He came from a place named Asgard, and he brought an army of alien creatures that helped him take over the world."

Tony narrowed his eyes at Pepper. "Pep, Honey, what are they feeding you here, boatloads of weed?"

"Tony! I know how it sounds…"

"It sounds made up."

"Yes, I know, but it's true! You saw him, right? You saw the heads, didn't you?"

Tony nodded. "Yeah, what's the deal with that?"

"Those were the heads of the Avengers."

"Avengers? Who the hell are the…_oh_…S.H.I.E.L.D.'s super-secret boy band?"

"Yes. They tried to stop him but, well…"

"I see." Tony looked down for a moment, trying to understand what Pepper had just said. It did seem farfetched, but the idea of building and using a time machine also sounded rather odd, if he thought about it. "So, how is this your fault? I don't see how it is."

Pepper gave him another weak smile as her right hand slid down from his face and rested on his arc reactor. "I rid the world of Iron Man."

"How?"

"I…you…that night on the roof…You…you told me you…you told me that you had…_feelings_ for me…" Even after eight years, it was still difficult for Pepper to utter the words.

"I told you that I loved you? Is that what you're trying to say? 'Cuz you can say it aloud, Potts. I still love you."

Pepper chuckled. "I didn't think you still did…I mean," she pointed to their position and hinted at the fact they had just made out. "I should've, maybe, but…I didn't think you would've be interested in me after I turned you down."

Tony scoffed. "Figures you'd turn me down here, too."

"What?"

"Nothing," Tony shook his head. "Then, what?"

"Well, you asked why I was turning you down. You wanted to know if it was because you were my boss, but I told you that it wasn't. And then I quit."

"Quit SI?"

"Yes. So, you asked me what you needed to do to prove that you were being honest with me. You wanted to know how to prove your feelings for me." She bit her lip to keep her from crying, but still a few tears made it out. "I told you that I wasn't interested in being with someone who would end up dying on me at a moment's notice, so I told you that if you ever stopped being Iron Man to look me up."

"And?"

"And that was the last time I heard from you. After that you just disappeared. I held off quitting SI until we could find you; I kept everything going for your return. I even went ahead and had the Tower built for you; I had hoped it would bring you out of hiding. But you never came back, and this is what has happened to the whole planet."

"So, you think that because you told me to stop being Iron Man, it's your fault the world was taken over? That's silly, Pepper. If I'd blame anyone for this, it'd be Washington. Why the hell didn't the President react to an invasion?"

Pepper shook her head. "Washington was the first city to go. A nuke was sent to New York to destroy the alien army, since they started coming out from here first, but they somehow sensed the missile and redirected it to Washington. It pretty much unraveled after that."

"What about S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"The Helicarrier was taken down way before that. Everyone died."

"What about…?"

"No one, Tony. No one was able to stop him. But, if you had been here," she cupped his face with her hands. "If you had been Iron Man, you would've done something. I just know it. You're too stubborn to have had let this happen. And I'm sorry I took that away from you. Yes, I hated the fact that every time you put on the suit there was a chance you'd never come back. But now I know that that same pigheadedness of yours would have brought you back every time."

Tony shook his head, pulled her hands from his face, and took them to his mouth. "You're wrong, Pepper." He kissed her hands. "It's wasn't my stubbornness that kept me coming back from missions; it was you. It was always you."

"I'm sorry, Tony." She began to cry. "I'm sorry for turning you down, for not letting you be who you are. I'm sorry for not telling you that I loved you too; that I still do. That I…" Pepper's speech was interrupted by Tony's mouth on hers. This time their kiss was even more passionate, more demanding, as if the two of them somehow knew it was going to be their last. His hands roamed all over her body, above and under her clothes, enticing her to do the same on him.

Her small cries and gasps made him want her even more, and had the sound of screams coming from outside the cell not reached his ears, he would have probably made love to her right there. _"Find that woman! The King wants her dead!"_

"Oh, no! They know I'm here!" Pepper said as she began pulling away from him and toward the small door.

"No, Pepper, stay here."

"I can't. Maybe I can hide somewhere else, but I don't want them to know that I was with you. They'll kill you even faster!"

"But, Pepper! They're going to kills us both, anyway! Stay here!"

"NO! I won't let them touch you. I'll buy you some time. You can escape. Maybe you can still fix this! Maybe you can make it all go away!"

"Pepper, there's no time! Stay here! I'll…I'll protect you."

"NO, TONY! I want you to live. I want you to do the things I never let you do! Here," she lifted up her skirt and from a small pouch attached to her inner tight she pulled out a small item and handed it to him. "I took it from Loki's room. It seemed important to you, so here it is."

Tony's mouth went agape. In Pepper's dainty hands was the time-travel bracelet, still in one piece and still shining brightly. He could see the charge was at 0.1%, and had the situation been much different, Tony would have yelled in a combination of terror and joy.

"Take it! I have to go!" The woman said as she threw the bracelet at him and kicked Tony in the chest to keep him from stopping her. By the time the inventor realized what she had done, Pepper's lifeless body fell with a thud on the floor outside the cell. The last thing Tony saw from the small window of his cage was the rolling head of Pepper Potts. A second later he felt the tingling sensation he had felt the first time he had jumped, but this time, his mind focused on one time and place only; and he repeated it over and over again as the bracelet enveloped him in a cocoon of warm light.

* * *

**A/N:** I love Pepperony, and I love writing them together *swoon* Well, the Epilogue is next. Don't forget to review!


	12. Epilogue

**A/N:** Salute to Arihimew. You'll know why ;)

* * *

**Epilogue**

Tony eyed their intertwined hands with a new found relief and hope. He remembered this moment as if it had been yesterday, and for all the time jumping he had done, it might as well have been. He could feel his skin tingling in excitement, and his heart beating rapidly in his temples, and even though his muscles were screaming that he needed to take off his Iron Man suit, he mentally told all his body aches to fuck off.

"You deserve better," he said aloud, recalling their conversation to the T, but preparing to make it end in a different way.

"Well." She said, not truly facing him just yet as she also stared down at their joined hands, the smallest pang of regret at her decision almost making her want to take back her words.

"You've taken such good care of me," he continued, now staring deeply into her eyes, hoping that she would read his true intentions as easily as she always had in the past.

"I've been in a tough spot, and you got me through it, so…right?"

"Thank you."

"Yeah."

"Thank you, for understanding." She told him, and she meant it.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's talk clean-up." He said ahead of what he knew she was going to say.

'I'll handle the transition. It'll be smooth."

"Okay. What about the press? Because you only had the job for a week. That's gonna seem…" He trailed as he leaned closer to her, staring directly into her eyes.

"Well, with you it's like dog years," she defended herself, raising her voice a little.

"I know." He nodded and leaned even closer to her.

"I mean, it's like the Presidency…" She began to say but he placed his left hand on the small of her back, pulled her closer to his face, and kissed her. She returned the kiss immediately, and slowly her left hand found the side of his face. He lowered his head and deepened the kiss, and his hands rested on her waist. After a couple of more exchanges, Tony pulled back from her and narrowed his eyes at her.

"Weird."

"No, it's not weird," her eyes fell to his lips.

"It's okay, right?"

"Yeah," she agreed with him and leaned closer to his face once more.

"Run that by me again," he met her halfway and kissed her again but then a third voice startled them.

"I think it was weird," Rhodey said. "You look like… two seals fighting over a grape."

"I had just quit, actually,"

"Yeah, so we're not…" Tony began as he held onto her hand.

"You don't have to do that. I heard the whole thing."

"You should get lost." Tony warned.

"I was here first. Get a roof."

Tony chuckled. "I thought you were out of one-liners."

"That's the last one." He assured him.

"You kicked ass back there, by the way," Tony admitted as his left arm surrounded Pepper's shoulders, and she reciprocated his touch by surrounding his waist with her hand.

"Thank you. You too." War Machine responded before adding. "Listen, my car got taken out in the explosion, so I'm gonna have to hang on to your suit for a minute, okay."

Tony flinched, thinking and knowing how much damage his suit could make. "Not okay. Not okay with that."

"It wasn't a question." Rhodey said before he stood up, closed his faceplate, and flew away from the roof.

The couple looked up as War Machine disappeared in the dark sky before Tony returned his attention to Pepper. "How are you gonna resign if I don't accept? Uhm?" He asked her, earning him a chuckle from her. He held her hands in each of his before he leaned over and kissed her again. The memories of his time traveling hit him like a bucket of cold water, and he could feel the recollections beginning to disappear from his mind, one by one. The last memory that hit him was of him standing over Pepper's grave, prompting him to pull away from her and hold her face in his hands.

"Palladium."

"What?" She asked.

"We have to check your body for palladium poisoning. Very important. Remind me of that."

"OK." She nodded to him before she tiptoed up to his face and kissed him again, taking away the last memory of his ordeal from the past.

xxxXXXxxx

"So, the meeting with your partners in Taiwan has been rescheduled yet again," Pepper said as she took down some notes on her Blackberry. She was lying on Tony's couch in the mansion, barefoot, and the billionaire was tenderly massaging her feet. "Are you sure you still want to come with? It's a long flight."

"Yeah, sure, why not? I'll see what they've done so far. They owe me an increase in output, right?"

"Yup, 45% at least."

"Alright, what else?"

"Well," she began as her finger slid down the screen. "The lab results came back negative. All four of us are clean from palladium poisoning; your treatment worked."

"Good! Why did we get that checked for, anyway?"

Pepper, shrugged. "Who knows? You're the one who brought it up. Probably not important. Anyway, since you're coming with me to Taiwan, I'm going to have to hire someone to water my flowers at home, which I loved, by the way," she gave him a wide smile before she looked up to the ceiling. "And, thank you, Jarvis for helping Tony with them."

"Hey!"

"You're welcome, Miss Potts." The AI responded, inviting Tony to scoff.

"Backstabber. What else?"

"You have a meeting with R&D tomorrow. They want to test the idea I talked to you about."

"Which one? You have so many awesome ideas; I'm not sure which one you're talking about, Honey."

"The one about using the arc reactor as a source of clean energy?"

"Ah! That amazing one. Yeah, I'll meet with them. That works out for me, actually. I've been wanting to meet with them."

"What for?"

"Oh! I haven't told you! A scientist guy from Latveria stopped by my office; he says he can build a time machine."

Pepper stopped typing on her Blackberry and looked up, a single eyebrow arched up. "Time machine? Latveria?"

"It's a very small country."

"Right. Tony, I think we should maybe focus on one idea at a time."

"Is that code for 'not in a million years am I ever going to let you waste time and money on a time machine'?"

Pepper smiled. "It's like one mind, Mr. Stark."

Tony groaned. "Fine. I'll let the guy know I don't need it."

"Thank you. Oh! My t-shirt arrived in the mail yesterday; it's ready to rock on," she jested.

"Oh, c'mon, Pepper. You're gonna love it! AC/DC is legendary."

"I'm sure. I'm really looking forward to seeing old men dress up as teenagers and scream on stage."

"Ye have no faith, woman."

Pepper chuckled and placed her Blackberry aside before she slid up to the end of the couch where Tony sat. She pulled on the lapels of his business suit until his face was on hers and she kissed him lightly. "I have faith, Mr. Stark, but not in AC/DC."

Tony kissed her again and pulled her up from the couch so that he could then lay her on his lap. "Do you? What do you have faith in, then, Ms. Potts?"

Pepper surrounded his neck with her arms and kissed him deeply before pulling back from his face to answer his question. "You, Tony. I have faith in you." She said with a smile.

"I love you, Pepper. It's about time you know that."

Pepper's smile widened even more at his revelation. "It's about time you know I love you too, Tony."

"Think we have time to continue this somewhere else?"

Pepper reached over to her Blackberry and turned it off before throwing it back on the couch. "All the time in the world, Mr. Stark. All the time in the world."

* * *

**A/N:** Who wants to cry with me? GOD! And to think my Pepperony fanfic writing began just a few months ago! Just to make it clear, this doesn't _completely _undo everything that happened in 30 Days. Pepper does not quit, does not get sick and die, and Fredrick does not come into the picture, but everything else important still happens. Tony still leaves the flowers for Pepper, attempts to shop for her, they stay at each other's places for whole weekends, Jarvis compiles an unfortunate list of songs to play for Pepper… you get the idea. This allows both 30 Days and 24 Hours to still be part of the movie continuity.

Well, this marks the end of IM fics for me. I will now focus on updating the two IMAA and the one Ranma fic I have pending and I should take a break; for real this time. I hope you are satisfied with this ending, and if you're still craving some Pepperony, stop by _Broken_ and _The Last Month_. It's Armored Adventures, but still Peppperony after all. Thank you, thank you, and thank you to all of those of you who reviewed and read, and favorited. You are the reason I write :)

Until then, I salute you!


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